


A Eulogy for Laplace's Demon

by Opacifica



Series: After Meat, Aftermath. [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Additional Tags to Be Added, Body Horror, Bro Strider Typical Bullshit, Canonical Child Abuse, Fluff and Angst, Fucking Genres How Do They Work?, Gender Issues, Homestuck Kidswap, M/M, Metaphysics, Misuse of Brain Ghosts, Other, Selfcest, Suicide, The Homestuck Epilogues, Vriska Is There
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-07-27 14:41:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 68,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20047735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opacifica/pseuds/Opacifica
Summary: He is going to have to stop himself.(You aren't sure you can.)





	1. Self Recognition through the Other

He wakes up. Liquid grey light filters through a set of sunbleached curtains. Rain patters against the window. Checking his phone with sleep-blurred vision, groping around for his glasses when he can’t read the little numbers on the first try, he finds that it’s fairly early on a Sunday morning.

For a long while, he lays in place, considering with some reluctance his schedule for the coming week. He’ll need to duck out of Wednesday’s client meeting early if he’s going to make it to the rheumatology appointment he’s had lined up for the last few weeks - it’s moronic how difficult it is to get into a specialist’s office in this city. He’d get up and start moving, but his back hurts like a bitch and a half, and he’s almost out of the muscle relaxant the urgent care physician prescribed, and he’s been rationing those, since he _needs_ them to sleep, and he’ll be absolutely boned if he runs out before his appointment.

Who could have guessed that his forties would be this fucking _dumb_?

As he wakes up more thoroughly, he swears under his breath. The acrid smell of smoke is wafting in under his bedroom door. The universe says, in the way of the universe, ‘enough laying around feeling sorry for yourself, time to put out a fire, bitch’.

“Sorry!” a voice from the living room calls to no one in particular. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

He groans, mobilizing his body and dragging himself out of the warm spot on his side of the bed limb by limb, minimizing the twist to his back. That’s been roughly the only useful advice on the matter of shit-wrecking upper back pain that anyone’s yet been able to give him. Don’t fuck around with your spine and make it worse than it is.

Halfway to the door, the fire alarm goes off, and a flurry of curses accompanies the haze of smoke in the front room.

“Dude,” he says, sighing as he opens a window, then another, breathing in the pleasantly damp morning air and waving a magazine from the coffee table about to try to get some airflow going, “There’s a reason neither of us cook, y’know.”

“Yes, well, it isn’t because soylent has any particular culinary merit, not that one would guess that to be the case from your eating habits,” Jake complains, stabbing at the smoke alarm with a broom handle. “And I distinctly recall your receiving doctors’ orders to rest up. Go back to bed.”

“Don’t shit on soylent,” he argues, padding over to the kitchen to select a room-temperature bottle.

His husband blocks his way, and he makes a noise of protest, reaching helplessly for his shitty meal beverages.

“No, _absolutely_ not, not today,” Jake says, squaring his shoulders. “You’re going right back to bed, my good sir, and bringing a cup of coffee with you, and I’m going to the bakery, and possibly purchasing a new toaster on the way home, since I’ve really done a number on ours. Understood?”

“Deliberately _mis_understood. I got the cafe chai flavor specially for breakfast. Fuck you. I’m being oppressed in my own home. This is a hate crime against me personally. First you vandalize my kitchen, then you starve me of sustenance, sweet lady soylent, the only person on this wretched earth who truly loves me -”

He can actually visibly register Jake rolling his eyes as he leans in to kiss him.

“You want me dead,” he insists, muffled slightly by the mouth pressed against his own. “It’s homophobia is what it is.”

“Can you grow up a little?” Jake chuckles. “If I wanted you dead, not that I’ve ever considered this, I’d simply chuck the wireless modem out the window and wait for you to wither away like a parched daisy.”

“Sadist.”

“Very rich, Dirk. Come along, now, I won’t ask twice.”

Apparently, attempting to dart past him and grab the soylent was not the reaction that Jake was going for, there. His reflexes are slowed by both his dicked-up shoulders and the aftereffects of all the drugs he’s been tossing back lately, and Jake easily hoists him into his arms, carefully stabilizing his back in such a way that he can’t even really complain about the potential to snap his spine.

“Really, you thought that was going to end well?” Jake sighs, carrying him back to their room.

In a sense, it didn’t end _not-well_.

He’s never found a reason to complain too sincerely about being fussed over, though he keeps it to himself.

“Heavens to Betsy, you _do_ make yourself awfully difficult to care for,” Jake continues, fluffing and redistributing pillows a bit clumsily, but with clear intent. He’s paid attention to the way that Dirk prepares his side of the bed with utter precision and painstaking consistency each night. When his back is fucking with him, it takes him about fifteen minutes to get it exactly right, which is fifteen minutes longer than Jake’s typical attention span for things that aren’t movies containing gun violence.

“It’s most of my identity.”

“Hardly.” His nose wrinkles and the place between his eyebrows creases as he searches for the right word. “Rather, you care very much for others. It must be agony, permitting someone else to reciprocate so amateurishly.”

He isn’t wrong.

Dirk frowns anyway.

“I’m not dying, y’know. Did you mishear when I said my shitty back was killing me or something?”

He flushes.

“Ah, no, nothing of the sort. What, I can’t be considerate of my own accord, in full possession of my faculties?”

“Historically, no, you can’t.”

They don’t bring it up nearly so much these days, since bygones are more or less bygone, therapies have been therapied, and they’ve settled into a routine that any married couple on earth would describe as ‘remarkably functional, all things considered’, but Dirk did buy his own ring, draft his own proposal, and literally hand the two to his ridiculous boyfriend after making their dinner reservations a few years past.

Suffice to say, both of them have mellowed with age.

Not much, but a little.

“Fine,” Jake sighs. “Roxy read me the riot act the other day, and I do feel like something of a cad, not having been there to drive you to urgent care, and, well, I do love you, you know, though I don’t imagine that I say it nearly enough. And damn it, what kind of man would I be if I couldn’t attend to my remarkable, beloved, and slightly scary husband in his hour of need?”

“Good thing we’ll never have to answer that question.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll muck it up far more royally next time.”

“Maybe this time it’ll stick.”

“Growth mindset!” Jake agrees, a line he’s recently appropriated from one self help book or another, much to his own sincere delight and almost no one else’s, though Dirk admittedly finds it kind of cute. Ironically.

He leans in and presses an uncharacteristically careful kiss to Dirk’s mussed hair.

“You sit tight, now, you hear me? I counted those atrocious soylent bottles, and if I come home to find one missing, I’ll… I’ll… you know, I’ll think of something.”

“Terrifying,” Dirk says, deadpan. “The day you think of something, the world may just collapse in on itself.”

“Ha-ha, you’re very funny when you’re in pain. Can you reach the coffee and all? Is there a book or something I ought to bring you? I won’t be too long.”

“Just come home soon,” he says, not pathetically at all. In fact, with the macho suavity of a man propped up on far fewer fluffy pillows and vastly more capable of lifting his own head without wincing. “We still have to finish watching Killers.”

“Blimey, I’d forgotten! We only have one day left on the rental DVD! That’s urgent business, right there.”

He laughs, and the movement sets off a fresh wave of pain between his shoulder blades. He passes off the ensuing groan as a cough. Jake appears unconvinced.

“You need to take your medicine,” he continues, picking up the pill bottle and rattling it encouragingly. “If it’s just a muscle spasm, as you keep claiming, this is liable to help.”

“‘m fine.”

It would definitely help, but he has only ten pills remaining and four days to go before he’ll have the chance to obtain more, three of which he’ll have to spend at work, since he’ll take a sick day when he’s dead and in hell, and perhaps not even then. Besides all that, he doesn’t especially enjoy how sleepy and liquid they make him feel, whether or not it beats ‘horrible constricting pain’. Better to sleep through the side effects.

“I hate to see you hurting, Dirk.”

“Have you considered looking at something else?”

“Stop that. Take your confounded medicine, you’re far too old to be acting like a stubborn schoolboy.”

“Old? I’m two days younger than you, grandpa.”

“And yet, which of us has a functioning musculoskeletal system, I ask?”

He has to admit, the answer, at the moment, isn’t him. Jake smiles triumphantly, though the expression melts into concern as he winces again. Yes, a little bit self-indulgently. But their ability to just be _normal_ together tends to wax and wane with their respective moods and schedules, and when the stars line up, well, who could blame him for wanting to enjoy it?

“Uh, hey,” Jake says. “I don’t have to charge out after breakfast pastries. We could just, you know, put the movie on.”

“Might be cool. I’m dying to get back to watching Katherine Heigl pretend it’s some kind of mystery why Ashton Kutcher wants to fuck her.”

“Will the back pain or the Hollywood conception of marital relationships do you in first, do you think?”

“I’ll let you know once I’m close to the end.”

“Whisper the name of the culprit as you expire and I’ll avenge you!”

“Hold off until you get my dying gift of a puppy in the mail and some A-lister drop-kicks it like a fuzzy little football. Then you’ll _really_ be upset. Someone should make a movie about that.”

Jake flicks on the television and frets about in the kitchen for a few confusing seconds until he returns, reluctantly, with two bottles of lukewarm soylent. For today, it doesn’t bother Dirk too terribly that his husband, at some moments, handles him as though he may be made of glass, or perhaps a high-yield chemical explosive.

Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher settle their differences with all manner of gun murders, Jake laughs along, his protein slurry beverage remaining conspicuously unopened, and Dirk, at long last, relents and takes another pill, leaning back into the warm hazy feeling of mild sedation and relief from pain with his husband’s freakish yaoi hands skimming gently and comfortingly through his hair.

From the base of his skull, physically nowhere, metaphysically trapped in place by the flicker of relevance in this batshit timeline binding your essence to continued existence, (you wish, more than anything, to be dead.)

…

(You realize fairly quickly that it’s not going to be anywhere near that easy. That you probably can’t die, because you aren’t alive. Your Self has evaporated along with your body, swirls of pure energy dissipating off somewhere in the depths of paradox space.)

(‘You’ don’t exist.)

(There’s nothing to do but float along with whatever narrative the remaining fragment of your essence inhabits.)

(It’s cruel.)

(You deserve it.)

(It’s cruel, and Rose is a monster for putting you here like this, and you just wanted to fucking die. That was all you wanted. Just to not exist anymore, so you wouldn’t have to agonize about fucking existing anymore, for someone else to make the call _for once_. It’s not like you were kneeling before the god of the purple-tinted multiverse asking for a Jonas brother to marry and a motherfucking pet pony.)

(You wanted to die the kind of Just death you have in thousands of timelines. Smiling, and no less dead for it, but for real this time. An end to the infinite expanse of being your shitty fucking self. If you truly couldn’t pull off your ploy to redeem yourself through a meaningful narrative arc, ending with perfect symmetry in your death - and you couldn’t, look how well that worked out, asshole - then at least your fully-fucking-omniscient, wildly-OP daughter could divinely intervene to _give you a fucking break_.)

(No such luck.)

(And to top it all off, you have no idea what you left behind. What will happen with canon in Rose’s hands. What could have been. At least your splinters all seem to have crumbled away to nothing along with your corporeal body, or else… you don’t know. You don’t know where you are. You can’t gnaw off your own leg and make a break for it like the dude in 127 hours.)

(You can’t even close your eyes as you kiss him.)

(You wish you didn’t have to watch.)

...

He watches, shifting nervously from dress-shoed foot to dress-shoed foot, as Roxy’s mom frowns out through a crack in the blinds and calls something unspecified to her daughter, doubtless touching up her makeup before the inevitable barrage of prom photos.

The corsage box in his hand feels gross and damp from the amount of time he’s been holding it, waiting for someone to open the door.

His hands are so sweaty. How the fuck is he supposed to pose all up on Roxy with his hands so fucking gross? She deserves better than that. He never should have agreed to this, he has no business at the stupid prom at all. It’s just not the sort of story someone like him is ever a part of. The cheap rented tux chafes at his neck, tight as a noose.

Roxy, when she answers the door, is a vision, of course. He helped pick out the dress. And the shoes. And everything else. It isn’t a surprise. She’s basically his best friend, after all, as weird as he feels about all this shit, as much as the weeks leading up to prom, graduation looming on the horizon, have weighed down their usually easy repartee.

It’s as though she’s forgotten all of that, though, the way she’s smiling at him.

He wonders just what the fuck she’s seeing when she looks at him like this.

“Dressed to kill, huh?” she says, reaching out and straightening his carefully color-coordinated tie and pocketsquare combo in an oddly maternal gesture. “I fuckin’ love this, dude, you seriously look so good, what the hell. Aw, and look, we match!”

“Here,” he says, handing her the corsage a bit brusquely, clearing his throat.

“Omg! I didn’t get you one of these little doodads, shit, we could, like, chop a li’l bit off mine and pin it on your jacket?”

He got one for himself, as well, having seen this coming about a mile away, and produces it from his pants pocket. She grins.

“Dude, it’s like you can read my mind. Come on in, my folks want a bajillion pictures.”

“‘Folks’ is a funny way of saying ‘rabid instagram followers’,” he laughs, adjusting his collar again, catching a glimpse of himself in the window’s reflection and frowning.

She snorts, then looks him in the eye with utter composure.

“That was you,” she says seriously. “You made that noise.”

Then she snorts again.

It’s about as awful as he’d expected. Her mother insists on a few without his shades, and Roxy murmurs something about how this level of exposure probably qualifies as nude modeling to him, so don’t worry, it’s not going on the internet, she’s not a pornographer.

That’s the first thing that’s actually relaxed him, even incrementally, all evening. This is just so patently not his element. He’d be kicking himself for not doing a better job of leaning into it, _idiot_, fucking _asshole_, this is for _Roxy_ of all people, but his rented dress shoes are wildly uncomfortable and he won’t be kicking anything any time soon. Blessedly, the photo op ends, Roxy picks up a long homemade scarf as a wrap, after some urging from her father, who is convinced that once the sun sets she’ll be cold in her strapless number, and they make a break for it at last.

A brilliant sunset greets them as they step outside, and Dirk stops to breathe again, willing himself to pull his shit together and stop being a little bitch.

He did his best to clean up his car before driving over, but it still looks dull and weirdly grimey next to the rhinestone-y sparkle of Roxy’s dress and the suit he doesn’t own. This was a mistake. This was all a mistake. He holds the door open for her, and she pauses for a second upon stepping delicately in.

“Hey, Dirk?” she says, her expression utterly unreadable. “Is this a mistake?”

He doesn’t trust himself to answer right away.

Instead, he swings into the driver’s seat and starts the car.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“I dunno, I don’t want to like, force anything, and it’s not like I’m squaring up for a smoochfest, just so you know, not that you’re not the most kissable stud in town! I just feel like we prolly could have sorted that out earlier, if we’d been, y’know, talking to each other basically at all in the last couple of weeks?”

“Sorry,” he says reflexively, pulling the car out onto the road.

“Dude! About what?”

He drives in silence, exiting her fancy gated neighborhood and getting up to speed on the highway.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “Just… thinking.”

She shuffles uncomfortably in her seat as he takes a turnoff past a local airfield, a more convoluted route to the hotel ballroom in question that requires a lot less driving at speeds that make his car make troubling noises, no matter how many hours he spends tinkering with the engine.

“Pull over,” she says.

“What?”

“Just pull over, Dirk, trust me.”

Despite his misgivings with himself, he trusts her more than anyone, and he does as she says, coming to a halt in an rubble-strewn but open field that used to house some sort of post office processing facility. She takes a very deep breath.

“I’ve been kind of trying to deal with some stuff lately, and I think it’s making me a shitty friend,” she begins haltingly.

“You’ve never been a shitty friend,” he says immediately.

“Lemme talk, okay, buddy?” she laughs, leaning over to nudge him with her shoulder. “Sheesh, I’m trying to pour my dumb heart out!”

He doesn’t think she or her heart is dumb in the slightest, except perhaps for ever having befriended him in the first place, but he does feel like his chest is about to collapse, and that keeps him from protesting the self-deprecation.

“Uh, it’s not just you, anyway. I’ve been kind of weird and distant with everyone, and I guess I was hoping that doing this would just fix everything and make it not-weird. I was really hoping this was gonna be a hugeass fucking moment of… oh! This is who Roxy is! Pretty lady Roxy in a pretty lady Roxy dress with a handsome dude on her arm and a kazillion friends and a totally kickin’ four years of high school ended with a hugeass bang. Like it’s supposed to be. Sometimes I get really in my own head about this stuff.”

“I know how that feels,” he says wryly, once it’s clear that she’s actually done with the statement rather than just pausing to compose herself. “Wish I could turn it off sometimes.”

“Nah, if ya turned off that big beautiful brain of yours, you’d be like… there’s a word for that, y’know, turning off your brain. It’s called dying.”

She sighs up at the ceiling of his car, at the inherited smoke and water damage stains.

“Can we sit on the roof of this thing, d’you think?”

“Might as well,” he says, gratefully exiting the car, hurrying around to get her door on her behalf. “Need a boost up?”

“Yeah. Fuck a fancy dress,” she says, and he kneels, letting her use his shoulder as a step. As long as he doesn’t tear the suit, he figures he’s in the clear.

Once she’s wriggled herself onto the roof, he follows cautiously, feeling the metal bow slightly under their combined weight, but confident, after a second, that it won’t collapse mid feelings-jam.

“You ever want to be something else, Di Stri?”

“Only all the fuckin’ time.”

She laughs.

“I don’t think I want to be this,” she says. “I’ve been doing some, you know, some thinkin’, semi privately. And, uh, this is probably going to sound super weird, and you don’t have to be cool with it, really, like… I don’t know how cool with it I am, actually, out loud, because I haven’t really said it out loud, but I’m not sure about the… woman-ing thing.”

He doesn’t immediately respond, and she presses on, her voice a note higher.

“And I know that’s super weird, right? Since it’s so much my thing? I mean, _so_ much, like I’m not even sure anyone’s gonna believe me at this point, not after four years, or like eighteen years, like it is with you, but I don’t… it’s never quite fit. The gal thing. The being a gal thing. But you can kind of get used to dressing up as anything, right? Convincing yourself in the mirror every morning that you’re not just a huge fake, like, a hopeless nothing-idiot who saw a picture of someone’s caricature of a woman one time and was like oh shit, guess I gotta look like that? I dunno. It’s weird. It’s a utilitarian dilemma, right, since tbh, no one ever really has to know how you feel about anything, and it’s like… is it better if the gender train just rolls right over you and no one ever has to deal with it? Or do you pull the ‘they/them’ lever and maybe make everyone feel weird about you forever?”

He shuts off his goddamned brain for the whole entire second it takes to not say something unfathomably stupid in haste or confusion and rolls over, the roof of the car buckling slightly beneath him, to pull them against his chest in a crushing embrace.

It’s a good moment for the truth.

“I love you so fucking much, Roxy.”

“God, I feel super stupid,” they say, wiping mascara-blackened tears from their eyes and trying to blot the tearstain-in-potentia off the collar of his suit. “It’s not really that hard, is it, just spitting it out. Except it is, except it’s literally just words, right?”

“I honestly don’t really know what the right thing to say here is,” he adds, “so I’m sorry about that. I’ll garotte myself with this fucking tie before I ever dick up anything between us on purpose, but I’m also worldwide semi-pro at dicking up, so…”

“You kinda fuckin’ nailed it, dude.”

“Thank fuck,” he sighs. “Are you… so, your name? You said… pronouns…”

“Sticking with Roxy for now,” they say. “It’s kinda like a stray cat that’s been hangin’ around all my life. I mean, who knows, the future’s a big ol’ question mark in a whole lot of ways. And I know it’s not gonna click right away, but they and them and shit is pretty tight.”

As casual as they sound, he can feel them shuddering with the effort of it through the roof of the car. The sunset is ending with a glorious display of pink clouds edged with gold on the horizon, the cavern of the sky fading to deep blue overhead.

Neither of them speaks for a while.

“Fuck, I really don’t want to steal your coming-out thunder, here, but I was going to tell you that I’m gay,” he says.

“Coming-out thunder is the best sequence of words I’ve literally ever heard in my entire life,” they say, propping themself up on their elbow. “And dude, that’s fucking awesome, I’d high-five you if I didn’t think this stupid dress was gonna pop right off if I lifted my arm too fast.”

They lean over and place their head on his shoulder. He breathes through his own perplexing non-reaction to the words he’s just said aloud, listens to them breathing along with him.

“Thank god,” he finally says, “we didn’t go to our shitty high school prom. I hate this fucking suit.”

Roxy bursts into a peal of laughter.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said you look good as hell, dude, but I get it. Formal dresses are basically the dumbest thing that’s ever been invented.”

“You want my jacket?”

They voice the approximate equivalent of a keysmash.

“Uh, hells yeah!”

He shucks it off and offers it to them, then, as an afterthought, loosens his tie and tosses it their way as well, unbuttoning several buttons of the starch-coated dress shirt for the hell of it.

“Ohmigod,” they say. “We’re almost the same size! Look how fuckin’ raw this looks, Dirk, c’mon, oh man.”

Striking an exaggerated pose against the shadowy vault of the sky, he thinks they look happier, really happier, than he’s ever seen them before. Grinning from ear to ear in a way that scrunches up their nose and forces their eyes closed, giggle-snorting without even blaming him for the sound as they let their arms fall and flop back against the roof.

The moon is barely more than a sliver, and as the stars come out, they stand out in stark relief and impossible multiplicity overhead.

“I bet there’s a world where this stuff is actually just words,” they say, gazing up thoughtfully, chewing the end of a piece of their hair like they usually do when confronting a particularly challenging problem in the CS class they’re taking together.

“Sounds pretty sweet.”

“Yeah, def. Like where you can just be and shit.”

“Being and shitting are my two favorite activities. You did it, Rox, you postulated a perfect utopia.”

“Aw, shut up, I’m getting deep over here. Don’t you dig the whole many-worlds thing? I’m not actually sure how I feel about it, but it’s a nice thought, right? A nice thought that kinda allows for infinity nice thoughts. I like that in my metaphysics.”

In lieu of any pointless addition, he pats their shoulder and listens as they sigh contentedly and resume breathing with comforting regularity.

“Can’t believe I thought taking your ass to prom was gonna make everything click,” they say. “When this whole fuckin’ time it’s like, I’ve been wondering if I haven’t just wanted to be as cool as you so badly that I willed myself out of being me somehow.”

“I’d be you if I could,” he says. “If it was something I could choose.”

What he means is, ‘I’d be anything but me if the only other choice wasn’t dead in a ditch,’ probably, but he doesn’t say that. That’s a matter for another late-night chat. The evening does get cool remarkably quickly, but Roxy shares their scarf and the warm bubble of ‘holy shit, I really said that, didn’t I’ lasts a little longer.

He can imagine it, the universe they’re describing, and he thinks they’re probably right. It would be easier, wouldn’t it, if it were just a question of words and nothing else. If it could all just be words, if he could live in the unambiguity of neutral symbols that represent nothing but themselves. If a mask was a mask instead of becoming a whole person, once he put it on.

It’s hard to imagine, but he can see it.

“I love you infinity,” they say. “No matter where we go next, no matter… anything. Nothin’ you can do to stop me, anywhere, ever.”

“Same,” he replies, and he thinks that if there’s one fundamentally definitional truth of him, it’s that one.

(Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you for proving Roxy wrong.)

(That’s really all there is to say. Because you know it’s not real, because you could never… because Roxy didn’t even bother telling you about their whole thing, and weren’t they - shit, _he_, fuck - wasn’t that the right fucking call? It’s not you watching the stars, it’s not you Roxy has any reason to love. It’s the body and the brain and the script of a skinny fuckup in a shitty too-tight rental tux with maybe a few of your mannerisms, and this B-tier fake Dirk is still a better friend than you ever were.)

(...feels really fucking real, though.)

…

It still doesn’t feel completely real, walking around on his own legs. Mottled black scarring, raised into ridgelike snarls of distorted tissue, still runs up and down his lower extremities, serpentine and viscerally unpleasant to behold. The first response medic brought in by his liberators in the rebel forces assured him that they would fade flat within a few years, back when he was wrapped in bandages and had no idea what to expect.

A week isn’t a lot of time, especially with most of it passed in a respite bay onboard a rebel vessel the make of which he didn’t immediately recognize while being carted in on a stretcher. Feels like an eternity, though. Time moves different when he’s not grafted to a low-level reconnaissance cruiser, and his stint on the ship wasn’t all that long, either. He’s only nine sweeps. Plenty of room in his timeline to move the fuck on as something other than a biotic fuel cell, which he was never all that gifted at to begin with. Psionic-capable, sure, or he’d have been culled during enlistment exams before he could say ‘mustardblood’, but a low-level technopath. Before rebellion forces started gaining non-negligible ground against the Condesce, he was on-track for a different sort of fate.

But her imperial army needed skypower, and ships needed batteries. Even shitty batteries would have to do.

His limbs still ache, but he drags himself out of his recuperacoon anyway, towels off, dresses, and forces himself through a shaky set of pushups. There’s a war on. The coin’s been in the air since they cut him out of his ship, and he’s fucked if it comes down on the wrong side. He was fucked before, yeah, but it’s almost worse, the barest sliver of hope that he might come out of this alive.

Not just alive, but in a better world.

(What the fuck is going on here? What the actual ever-loving _fuck_?)

By the look of the double-set horns protruding from the other recuperacoons in this part of the respite bay, he assumes he’s been shuffled off to some dark part of the ship intended for the recovery of liberated batteries. All well and good, if he didn’t have every intention of figuring out what happened to the rest of his ship and then entangling himself firmly in the nearest rebel plot.

He’s no stranger to picking sides under duress.

This is probably the least duress-ful side-picking he’s ever done. At least now his fate is in his own hands, and it’ll be way more within his stewardship once he sorts out exactly what the fuck is going on, figures out what’s happened to the rest of his crew, and gets the pile forming with regards to potential next steps.

Returning to the regulation wardrobifier in the far corner of the respite bay, he retrieves a pair of shades and sets out into the hallway. An easy job - a thin trickle of power administered to the locking mechanism is enough to send the panel hissing back into the wall, rolling closed behind him.

Outside of the chamber, it’s conspicuously empty in a way that makes him wonder afresh what kind of ship this is. Nothing empire-regulation about this construction or operation. He waits, counting to sixty in silence, for any indication that his leaving the respite bay has been noted. A week isn’t much, particularly not for most of the other goldbloods, who must have been grafted in for far longer.

After a minute has passed, he begins to walk, as purposefully as he can manage with absolutely no idea where he’s going. The silence of the vacant hallway, interrupted only by hums and clanks beneath the flooring and the light impact of his own footsteps, puts him on edge.

Perhaps there’s some especially talented engineer operating the craft independently, and - well, the thought is bizarre, but perhaps the occupants of this ship simply trust one another so absolutely as to leave their doors unguarded. He lacks a key card or any other licit means to unlock the doors he passes, but any psionic-capable troll back in the recovery bay could make short work of these barriers in one way or another. Him, in particular, without raising any sort of alarm.

Haven’t they considered the safety hazard?

He frowns, and continues until he’s fairly certain that he’s near the craft’s central navigation systems, tendrils of his power running through his hands, his fingertips skimming along the steel surface of the floor beneath him as he approaching a particularly reinforced port at the end of a hallway. He can feel the machinery humming behind it, eclipsed only by the engine he can sense somewhere far below.

All this way, still without encountering a single guard. It’s uncanny.

Well, now or later, this seems to be the time to make his presence known to his rescuers.

He opens the door that looms before him, pressing his palm against the panel to the left, prompting a click and a gentle whirr, barely anything to advertise his presence.

“If I havta repeat all that shit again on account of this asshole, I’m gonna kill myself and then evrybody in this fuckin’ room,” a seadweller decked out in hilarious yellow pantaloons and a - is that a crown? A _matching cape_? - possibly the most ridiculous outfit he’s ever seen, announces as every head in the room swivels to where he’s standing, both palms raised in surrender.

Also, he has enormous fucking purple wings.

They all do.

So there’s that spicy tidbit of what-the-fuck to add to the heaping pile.

The control room appears to have been modified into a sort of meeting room through the addition of a low table, around which four seats are filled by other trolls in similar garb. He hasn’t been in an enclosed space this crowded since he was practically a wiggler; the proximity to so many unfamiliar trolls activates a latent fight or flight response that he struggles to suppress.

It’s pointless, after all, he’s not going to win a fight here and he doesn’t have the knowledge of the ship necessary to make any kind of escape.

There’s a reason most empire ships are so sparsely staffed, though, why crews are partitioned between roles rather than jammed together in tiny chambers. Nonviolent gatherings of this size are highly unnatural. Even his crew of three total, for a ship of their size, often felt too small.

Of course, there’s plenty of other deeply unnatural shit going on here to focus on.

“Ooh, this is so exciting, don’t you fin-k?” a second seadweller emotes. “I didn’t expect to sea any of you up and a-boat for another week or two!”

Scratch that, not just any seadweller. Feferi Peixes, alleged to be the descendent of the Condesce herself. He swallows, and he hopes it’s not especially conspicuous. It almost certainly is. Thinking back through the disorientation of his extrication from the grafts, he’s shocked to realize that this was almost certainly the medic who treated him, unless they’ve got another gentle-voiced fish-pun-maker hiding in a ventilation shaft.

The _rebel empress_. Fucking shit.

(You don’t know who the fuck any of these people - trolls? - are, and it’s frankly disturbing as all fuck to be piloted around by a totally alien body that seems to recognize several of them. As, apparently, a troll, it’s not xenophobic in the slightest to say _fuck this noise_.)

(Also, your trollsona is an indigoblood. You’re a sagittarius. This is bullshit.)

(Not that it matters.)

“Your imperial majesty,” he says, taking a knee, in lieu of any other brilliant plan, which he usually finds is best practice around highbloods, especially those in possession of massive culling forks. “It’s an honor to personally extend my gratitude to our liberator.”

She giggles.

He glances up, trying not to let the surprise show in his expression, only to realize, at second glance, that she can’t be more than eight or nine sweeps herself. Which should have been obvious, he supposes. The last heiress was culled by imperial drones not long before his first or second wiggling day. Another would have followed shortly.

The rest of the cast, though, doesn’t contain a single troll he’d estimate at any more than his own age. He’d been hoping to find at least one or two seasoned veterans running this thing, though the conspicuous lack of extra-tech tactical defenses and the bizarre costuming makes a great deal more sense in context.

“It physically pains me to say this, but can we get back to Ampora’s neighbeastshit whining about spacecraft logistics?” a troll in a black and red caped ensemble with a hood hanging around his neck groans. “Stand the fuck up, assface, you can tongue-polish her shoes later.”

“We take turns,” a ridiculously cloaked troll seated beside him adds flatly.

With some difficulty, he finds his feet, willing himself not to snap back at the ridiculous assembly of trolls dressed as though they stepped into the meeting in the spaceship’s control room on their way back from a three-sweep wriggling day slumber party or some shit.

“Karkat, Sollux, come on,” the heiress says reproachfully. “The goldbloods we’ve freed are our _guests_.”

She turns back to him with an emotive smile.

“Would you like swim-one to take you back to the recovery bay?”

“If it’s all the same to you,” he says carefully, avoiding direct eye contact, “I have - well, a lot of questions, and spaceship logistics would be an ideal place to start.”

“Least he’s got his priorities in order,” the violetblood announces, puffing himself up and launching back into what he presumes was the interrupted breakdown of the rebel forces’ paradox space transportation woes.

It strikes a little close to home. The complaint seems to be, more or less, that without grafting psionics into the ships they’ve captured, their forces have limited capacity to make use of the vessels. He doesn’t immediately understand a pretty substantial amount of the jargon, which doesn’t surprise him, but the gist of it is, the rebellion has been relying on a small number of trolls with godlike powers to accomplish… just about everything they’ve accomplished thus far.

If half of what Whatshisgills Ampora is saying is true, the game-changing challengers to the Condesce’s reign of imperial terror are seriously a handful of overpowered wigglers barely old enough to enlist.

Probably not something they ought to be letting on to a literal soldier of the regime, whether or not they’ve thought to question his allegiance yet. Then again, to circle back to ‘if any of it is true’, that may well be the least of this piecemeal crew’s concerns. What, exactly, is he supposed to do to oppose five maybe-living-gods on their own spaceship?

He finds that he has to admit, there isn’t really a protocol at this level of absurdity-in-leadership beyond ‘why the fuck not? This might as well happen.’

“...so here’s the fuckin’ situation,” the monologue continues, unimpeded by his rising concerns. “We’re gonna have to start scrappin’ ships and doin’ a lot less liberatin’ an’ a whole lot more executin’, which is fine by me, unless we figure out the battery situation pretty damn quick.”

“Whale, we can’t just g-raft them back in!” the heiress insists, cutting in immediately, before he can even really process the implicit threat, gesturing grandly at him and then towards the notably not-monologuing three trolls still seated. “We made it this far without… we’ll figure out a way-ve to win this fight without torturing fin-nocents. I won’t be like her.”

“Yeah, you sure won’t havta worry about that once we’re all heroically culled. Her bein’ still alive after she forks you an’ all, pretty easy way to distinguish yourself.”

“Dude, take it down a couple notches,” the tired-sounding troll from before - ah, he pushes his hood back slightly, revealing a doubled-up set of horns - sighs. “We’ve got options.”

“Tell me to fuckin’ calm down again, Captor, I’ll show you calm. Dead fuckin’ calm, where you’re _dead_, ‘cause I’ve killed you.”

“You are unsettling our guest,” the last of the trolls present announces in a soft monotone. She’s been silently observing since you entered, decked out from head to toe in red, extending to her wings and her jewel-like ruby irises. “I don’t have any preference as to whether or not you attempt to murder each other, but I thought you might like to know.”

He offers her a grateful half-smile, the most visible expression he’s currently willing to make.

Bearing witness to two presumably high-ranking members of the rebellion, disorganized or not, absolutely beating the shit out of each other would be hilarious, but not exactly what he’d call ‘getting off on the right foot’.

“I’m not a _guest_, so I don’t count for shit, I guess, but I’m mighty fucking unsettled myself, or I would be if this didn’t happen every two hours,” long-black-cape guy interrupts.

“Eridan,” Feferi pleads, looking exceedingly distraught over a little shouting for someone who fancies herself a galactic overlord on par with the Condesce. “Please, you don’t have to net along with Sollux, but can we ease up on the death threats? I know you’d never ever ever -”

Well, this has gone on altogether long enough.

“I, ah,” he says, cursing internally at his own hesitance, “I apologize for interrupting, but I might have some insight on the technical problem you’re describing.”

He coughs conspicuously.

“_Sir_,” he adds, expertly not-wincing at the appellation.

Eridan’s expression betrays an almost hilarious level of _surprise_.

“Yeah, uh, of course,” he says, glancing around as though someone might leap out and announce that the gesture of subordinate respect was all an elaborate ruse.

He’s worked under plenty of highbloods in his day. This is new. This whole ridiculous situation is entirely new. At least it lends some credence to the whispers spread in the ranks about the promises made by the rebel heiress, none of which he’d put much stock in, prior to learning that she’d literally pulled him out of his graft herself, for fuck’s sake. But the idea of a radically different social structure, chaotic as it sounds, outlandish as the highbloods claim any shift could be… it doesn’t seem so unfathomably _radical_ here.

“Is there any way I could take a look at the means by which you’re powering this vessel, if not by biotic battery?” he asks. “I trained as a techmortician, before -”

He’s still not certain that his noble rescuers understand that his enlistment was completely voluntary, so he opts to trail off, here.

“Thank cod,” Eridan sighs. “Someone else on this ship who knows what the fuck they’re talkin’ about. No worries, Fef, I’m savin’ my murder juice for another day.”

“Sea that you do,” the heiress says, faux-sternly, reaching in to pat him gently on the cheek before returning to the table.

“If we can all pull our heads out of our own waste chutes, now, I’ve got an update from Nepeta. Potential retaliation by the Grand Highblood for the subjuggulator we took out a few weeks ago, outside of the Condesce’s standing orders to avoid engagement with our forces. Could be a major breakthrough in terms of fragmenting their leadership if we play it right, but knowing us, this’ll go globes-up in one way or another.”

Eridan makes a break for the door, and he follows, glancing back over his shoulder at the rest of the rebel forces as the port closes behind him.

The violetblood lets out a deep breath once they’re separated from the proceedings by a solid plate of steel.

“What a glubbin’ nightmare.”

“You and the heiress, though,” he observes, tapping his own cheek to indicate where she touched him.

He knows moirails when he sees them. That’s how he kept abreast of imperial and rebel proceedings while he was grafted; English would leave the ship to Crocker and fill him in, as difficult as it was to really participate while he was welded to the biofibrous filaments snaking through his flesh, half-blinded by the psionic connection, mostly immobilized.

It was better when he was there. His old friend from the academy, the one who managed to keep him from getting culled about ten thousand times on account of his sharp tongue and wildly inadequate psionic capabilities.

His bloodpusher twists slightly, rises into his throat at the thought.

“Yeah, yeah, me an’ her… yeah. It’s complicated, but we’re makin’ it work,” he sighs. “She’s a good kid, though the whole thing’d fall apart in about half a second without the rest of us to rein her in. I do love her, though, don’t get me wrong. Coulda had a whole paradise to ourselves, but all she wanted was to come back and make shit right at home. Too fuckin’ good for her own good.”

“I get that,” he says. “My moirail’s got a good heart, but the bastard self-destructs even more regularly than I do. Real fuckin’ accomplishment. Makes it look easy. Don’t think I’ve ever been a great influence, but we make it work.”

They were piloting an unarmed recon vessel. Crocker, at least, was an important figure, favored by the Condesce. What’re the odds they’ve got the two them them recuperating in some dark corner of this massive fucking ship? The more time he spends walking around, functioning despite the weakness in his appendages, the more anxious he feels himself growing about their fate.

“Moirails,” Eridan huffs. “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t… say whiny shit about them anymore without gettin’ culled by a souped-up mustardblood.”

He pauses, seemingly processing what he’s just said. 

“No offense, obviously.”

“None taken.”

“You’re alright, Strider,” he sighs. “What got you into this shit, anyway? They pick you up outta some lab or something? We’ve heard all kinds of stories from the batteries.”

Skin prickling with unease, he slides the borrowed shades from his face. One eye, he knows, shines luminous and flickering-orange with psionic power. The other is a fairly mundane yellow. 

Eridan stares down at him with barely-disguised curiosity. A mutant among mutants, he’s spent most of his fairly short life trying to compensate for the oddity of his physiology in other ways. After a second, he pushes his glasses back up, the bright fluorescence illuminating the halls already threatening to give him a headache.

“Pretty much,” he says. “I’m a better technopath than a rote psionic, but I can handle a small craft just fine. Had ideas about abiotic batteries from building my own bots and whatnot back before Alternia got blown to shit, but I’ve never really had time to work on it. My moirail got me out safely, had his own little ship, but you don’t last long on your own at six sweeps. We ended up on a highblood’s cruiser for a while, until they started dropping the age for conscription once you guys showed up.”

“Huh,” he says. “Guess I never figured anyone else made it through once we fucked the planet over.”

“Not many did.”

“Damn.”

“No big deal. Someone would’ve blown the place up eventually.”

“Probably woulda been me,” the seadweller laughs. “If I ever got my shit together. So not too likely.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly is going on with your command structure?” he finally asks. “That’s an, ah, interesting way to run meetings. A really… well, hemotypically integrated crew. Not that it doesn’t appear to be working for you all. But it ain’t like anything I’ve run into before.”

“Don’t dance around it, we’re a mess.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Just surprisingly oriented. I’m curious how you or Feferi or… how exactly this crew was put together?”

“They’re all fuckin’ quadranted, s’why,” Eridan grumbles. “Kar an’ Fef pretty much run the show and can’t be fucked to break up their little polycule. S’like workin’ with a bunch of glubbin’ children some days.”

He winces.

“Quadrants on a ship can keep shit moving, but I figure it could get confusing as hell just as easily. Especially with an operation of this scale.”

“You’d know?”

“Sure would. On the recon vessel I powered, the captain and the supervisory officer were matesprits. Always having it out about something or other, half the time it was hard to tell if they were red or black. She let him get away with a lot of dumb shit. Don’t know what he was thinking, tapping me for a battery, since my complete lack of juice is probably how y’all caught up with us so easy, but…”

Not to mention the fact that English was his moirail, a relationship that seemed to annoy Crocker to no end. He didn’t make much of an effort to alleviate her concerns, in part because he was literally trying to keep the stupid ship functioning day-in and day-out. Also because he’s an asshole.

He shrugs, attention diverted momentarily as they walk past a port that he recognizes as the entrance to the recovery bay in which he woke up an hour or two previously.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Eridan is saying, frowning. “We catch everybody. Sol blew the thrusters off your ship before anyone knew we were there.”

“How’d you manage that? Our investiterminator’s orders were to find you guys. She’s got vision eightfold in both eyes, can barely walk around without glasses, but she’s good at her job.”

“She got pretty close,” he admits. “Equius put a fuckton of shields up with his void-y shit, usually works pretty well. Even if one of the investerminators they send can actually see us, the ship never looks the way they figure it will.”

The growing tightness in his throat finally becomes unignorable.

“Could I ask what happened to them?”

“What, the oliveblood and the cerulean?” Eridan asks.

He nods.

“No problem, dude, you don’t have to worry about them anymore. You’re safe with us. I give Fef a hard time about it, since I know half of it is just Sol bitchin’ her out about dumbass yellowblood social justice shit so fuckin’ always, but it really is monstrous stuff, what happens to you guys.”

“Oh.”

“They’re dead,” he adds. “Cerulean on impact, olive when the glubbin’ idiot tried to get the drop on me in the graft room. Half the time we get survivors tryna cull their batteries, since apparently there’s some bullshit goin’ around about us stealin’ you guys for our own ships. Not quite right. Fucker died practically on top of you.”

Oh.

He sways slightly on his feet. Should have seen that coming. Really should have seen that coming. There’s a war on. He knows that. For all this is a ship full of doofy kids in costume, they’re being treated as a viable threat to the empire for a reason.

English and Crocker are dead.

Oh.

“Don’t mean to dredge up bad shit,” Eridan adds, spectacularly unhelpfully, though it does force him back to the present, blinking methodically and attempting to recover some semblance of normal behavior.

“No, right,” he says vaguely. “Right.”

“Hey,” the violetblood says, turning on his heel to face him, yellow cloak fluttering distractingly behind him. “I get it’s probably a hard thing to wrap your thinkpan around, but you’re really safe here. We’re gonna take care of you for as long as you need, and once the war is over, you can be anything you wanna be. There’s a whole planet waitin’ for us. We got a mother grub and everything. Shit’s gonna be the way it should be.”

He nods, but clenches his fist as he follows Eridan down an unremarkable port and into the cavernous engine room. The seadweller’s gills are soft and membranous and exposed in his moronic costume, far less practical than the imperial uniform. It wouldn’t take much more than a deathwish and a few teeth to tear them open.

What isn’t clicking about this situation?

What kind of troll doesn’t protect their throat around a potential adversary - an adversary whose name none of them have bothered to ask, who they know next to nothing about?

He doesn’t know what he wants anymore. Doesn’t know where he stands. He’s stupid, that’s for certain. He’s stupid, and his moirail is dead, and he was considering helping the very crew that did it. The very troll who pulled the trigger.

He’s going to figure it out. Reevaluate his place in this. Maybe the rebels truly do have the right of it. He’s seen enough to know there’s something different happening here, something worth understanding. So he’ll wait, and when the time is right, he’ll choose his side. And then, regardless of where the coin lands, he’s going to rip out Eridan Ampora’s throat.

(It lasts what feels like centuries, if that were a temporal designation that mattered. Whether or not it does - whether or not anything does - you become accustomed to the way the narrative flows, as much as it pains you to admit. You’re immersed in this universe, regardless of whether you would ever voluntarily degrade yourself with this sort of… fantasy?)

(Weeks in, after what you think might be the slowest and most insipid blackrom seduction you’ve ever been even a remote part of, no small feat, you fuck the whiny troll, and then you try to kill the whiny troll. Jake is revealed to be alive, though his name sounds weirdly-spelled. It’s unimaginably stupid. You falter in your convictions - or _he_ does, ‘Dhirrk’, the fucking inanity of it all - and regain them, and liberate the empire.)

(Fine. It’s not too terrible of a concession to admit that you were curious what would happen.)

(It would have happened anyway. Keeping yourself alert and occupied is a matter of, if not continued existence, continued functional non-existence.)

(There isn’t anything to learn here other than the fact that Rose is definitely fucking with you. That these aren’t merely remembered shadows of the alternate visions of reality she forced into your skull to finally break you. You aren’t simply being passed like a shitty blunt between untouchable, impossible versions of yourself, people you could never have been.)

(You’re somewhere outside of truth.)

(Somewhere reality can barely touch, that even the light can only trickle through for brief intervals before the walls close in again.)

(You’re in hell.)  
...

“Okay, starting out strong. Queen's Pawn Opening, Tartakower variation specifically,” the shimmering apparition explains, leaning over Jake’s shoulder to indicate the first two moves on his laptop screen - king’s knight to F3, queen’s pawn to D4. “Your opponent has their bishop out through the keyhole here.”

“Knight H4! I’ll show that damned bishop what’s what,” Jake declares, clicking busily at the gameboard.

“Alright, I’d have gone with your queenside bishop’s pawn - that bishop really couldn’t have done a damned thing to you, though I guess it’s great to keep an eye on opening moves that get a piece like that out in the open,” Brain Ghost Dirk sighs.

Obligingly, the computer opponent, set somewhat ominously to difficulty level four of ten, moves its bishop back to G6, out of range of the knight.

“Fine, I’ll do the pawn thing _now_.”

“No!”

Jake forfeits his queenside knight for his troubles, as what would have been a perfectly advantageous move, had he not driven the enemy bishop into a strike position, now leaves his defenses critically compromised. The opposing bishop nestles comfortably behind enemy lines. He sighs, Brain Ghost Dirk groans in pure vexation, and he takes the bishop with the corresponding rook.

“Why the everloving _fuck_ would you summon me here to help you with this game if you’re not even going to try to win?” the ghost protests.

A little too quickly, Jake shrugs and begins to sputter out an explanation.

“Golly, I can’t help it, you know, sitting around, doing the sort of thing a fellow’s best bro happens to be a real whiz at, it’s hardly deliberate, I mean, one gets to thinking, as one does, after blowing a few games against a computer, and invariably winds up believing a bit more adamantly than usual in someone who might be able to help him out -”

“You have my number,” the ghost says, looking down at his questionably-corporeal yet well-manicured nails with mild disaffection. “My real number, I mean.”

Jake swallows uncomfortably.

“This is much… lower stakes.”

“Coward.”

“Hey!”

“I can’t say what you don’t believe, Jake. For fuck’s sake, stop playing games.”

“I’m not playing games!” Jake huffs. “Queen to D4! Check!”

“You’re making a mistake,” the ghostly splinter of Dirk sighs. “You should’ve taken that midboard pawn when you had the opening. You can still win, but this’ll set you back a shitton.”

“Fiddlesticks,” he mutters, as his computerized opponent liberates him of a pawn of his own.

“I can’t fucking watch this. Ruin your own life,” the ghost says, and disappears.

(You wish this permutation of you could matter here for a second longer, because Jake raises his voice, extends his hand, his lips forming a word, seeking something more from you. His expression is impossibly hopeless, in stark contrast with the affect you think you remember, too buoyant to touch ground, to act as an anchor to anyone, even himself.)

(You wish you had any idea where you are, whether any of this iteration of narrative possibility is true, whether any of this actually matters in some way you couldn’t see before.)

(Of course, it _could_. If it couldn’t, the light couldn’t touch this, even briefly, and you wouldn’t be here, observing with the collar of nonexistence pressing into your metaphysical trachea, choking you out, forcing you to watch, endlessly, impotently.)

(Infinitely, it seems.)

…

The apartment is quiet, but not silent. It’s edging close to ninety-eight degrees outside, and the air conditioning is on full-blast. He’s focused on a marionette that’s beginning to fall apart, the seam between the porcelain neck and the black fabric shoulders of the miniature ‘Boyz n the Hood’ t-shirt having nearly split.

Painstakingly, thread by thread, frowning down at his work, he reattaches the puppet’s head with a small tube of cyanoacrylate glue and a pair of forceps.

His coke has gone flat, but that’s his preference. He pauses to take a sip, waiting for his work to dry, and inspects the result. Good as new.

He sets the marionette carefully aside.

“Somethin’ the matter, little man?” he finally says, gaze flickering up over his shades.

Dave has been waiting for the last few minutes. He’s gotta hand it to the kid - he learns fast, hovers cautiously at a respectful distance, didn’t interrupt him.

“Nah, no problems,” he says quickly.

“Good to hear.”

“Just wondering about dinner is all.”

“Got a pizza earlier. Left it around.”

“Oh. Cool,” he says.

Dave hasn’t quite gotten the hang of the whole ‘stealth’ thing, but that’ll just take time. In a few more years, he’ll be in shape for what’s coming. He returns to his puppet, tests its range of motion to ensure that the repair hasn’t altered its functionality, and waits.

He doesn’t have to wait long. Dave is excruciatingly predictable - another fault he’ll need to work on, if the kid is going to live past thirteen.

A clatter of metal sounds from the kitchen as Dave jostles the fridge in the process of climbing up to reach the pizza box he left balanced on top of the appliance. The entire jumble of shitty swords sprawls audibly across the tile.

“Bro!” Dave calls, panic raising his voice by about an octave.

He turns just slightly.

“Can’t hear you, dude, I’m not a dog. Bring it down a notch.”

“Bro,” he repeats, no less panicked, forcing his voice into a lower register. “Can you…”

He’s dangling over the pile of jagged metal from a tenuous grip on the top shelf of the fridge, kicking futility in an effort to gain some purchase that isn’t razor sharp and also literally just a shitton of swords.

Taking his time, giving Dave a fair shot to deal with his shit on his own, he lopes over to the kitchen, crossing his arms as the boy begins to lose purchase. He doesn’t scream, just winces in preparation for the fall.

It’s probably the best he can expect of a seven year old.

He takes pity on the kid, leans over the mess of jacked-up weaponry, and pulls him to safety by the collar of his shirt, sighing just slightly. His legs nearly give out from beneath him as he sets him down, but to his credit, he holds his footing.

“I’m sorry,” Dave says quietly.

“Don’t fuckin’ apologize. Show me you can do better. Clean this shit up and meet me on the roof.”

On his way out, he grabs a bottle of coke. Lukewarm, but he likes his drinks that way.

He looks out over the city as he waits, unbreakable katana in hand. The heat of the late summer distorts the lower-reaching buildings of downtown Houston, makes the cars look like hazed-out candy-colored beetles. He produces a piece of sandpaper from his pocket and polishes the blade idly.

It’s not going to get any sharper. Shit’s unbreakable.

Doesn’t mean he’s going to stop keeping up with it. He’s got standards, and they apply to him as much as to anyone.

The door opens. He puts away the sandpaper and raises his sword.

…

While he’s years out of undergrad, there’s still little that prompts such a sense of absolute relief as closing eighteen open tabs in the process of finishing a piece of writing. In this case, a grand schematic of intricate generalities uniting the highs and lows of previous comics and allowing near-infinite permutations based on his typical interactive-storytelling bent. There’s still a truly herculean amount of work to do, of course, but the launch is already highly anticipated in certain small, very weird corners of the internet.

For the moment, he lets himself breathe. It comes with an odd sort of stiffness, and it registers that he hasn’t completely exhaled in a long time.

Exactly how big is this going to be?

His study is pleasantly cool, spring sunlight reflecting off his screen, illuminating the sheer amount of dust and gross shit that’s accumulated in the last few weeks since he had a spare second to wipe the thing down. It can’t be the only thing he’s been neglecting. The thought turns his stomach slightly.

Standing on the shaky legs of a man who has spent far too many hours slumped before a computer, he stretches, pushes back the curtains, looks out into the garden. Crocuses and other bulb flowers are beginning to lift their petaled heads over the lawn. A top-notch excuse not to cut the grass.

A soft knock at the door interrupts his musings.

“Dirk? I made lemonade,” a voice, simultaneously familiar and totally foreign, offers. “Are you at a place where you could take a break? It’s such a beautiful day.”

“Yeah,” he hears himself say. “Yeah, maybe for… a while.”

He closes his laptop.

Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate this ‘Homestuck’ thing.

…

“To what do I owe the pleasure of being summoned mid-rounds, Dr. Crocker?” he asks, breezing in to Jane’s administrative office without knocking. It would worry her if he did. She might think he was ill.

“A patient of ours,” she explains stiffly, looking up from a pile of manilla folders. “The case in the isolation ward for the last few days. Federal investigators are moving forward on a domestic terror inquiry, suspicion of an anthrax attack. We’ll be forced to turn over our records any day now.”

He scoffs.

“That’s English’s patient.”

“You consulted on labs.”

“Sure, but I never met the - Mr…” he leans over to take the file before she can stop him. “Crocker.”

Oh.

Jane slumps forwards against her carved mahogany desk, head in her hands.

“Meningeal anthrax?” he reads off the file. “A terror case? Jane, that’s bullshit. Brain anthrax is astronomically uncommon, literally unheard of in cases involving the kind of vectors that can be easily leveraged by some kind of... he didn’t get this shit in the _mail_, it’d take prolonged exposure, possibly a baseline immunocompromised state -”

“Then I imagine your notes will be invaluable in ruling out a false conclusion.”

“Jake’s not stupid. He’ll have come to the same conclusions, though with a touch more old-timey bullshit.”

“Have you met Dr. English?” she sighs. “An hour in a room with someone so much as carrying a clipboard and he’ll tell them anything he thinks they want to hear. Let alone a goddamned FBI agent. He’s an excellent physician, but he’s not the one to set this straight.”

“And I take it I am?”

“Yes. No. I don’t _know_, god damn it, this is killing me. Something isn’t right, here, and I need time to investigate before I let my mother use my father’s state for some sadistic plot to take out a Pillsbury executive or an overzealous workers’ rights organization. If I permit you to represent this case, without any doubt in my mind, you’ll be in handcuffs in thirty seconds.”

“I think you underestimate me. Fifteen seconds.”

She laughs aloud, glancing up from her files with red-rimmed eyes, like she hasn’t slept in a week. Probably hasn’t, if he knows Jane. That father of hers is just about all she has, apart from this job. He was in med school with her when she got herself disowned, though she was never forthcoming as to why. He suspects it might have something to do with her wife, though how anyone could lose their grip over their daughter being lucky enough to snag Roxy fucking Lalonde is completely beyond him.

For all the shit he gives her now that she’s in administration, she’s probably his oldest friend, pre-dating even the Jake English fiasco and eventual resolution.

“If you can buy me a day or two, I’ll sort this out,” she says. “But I don’t know what I’ll do around here without you. Horribly enough.”

“I can leave Jake some notecards. He’ll fill in as resident asshole,” he suggests.

This makes her laugh again, even as the tears that have been welling up behind her glasses spill down her cheeks at last.

“Fuck you, Strider.”

“If you hadn’t gone and gotten yourself married, Crocker -”

“Shut up. Ugh. They’ll be back at ten tomorrow. Agents Egbert and Harley. She’s _very_ sharp.”

“A little less than twelve hours, then,” he says, thinking out loud, actually going so far as to crack his knuckles.

“Some time to get your affairs in order.”

“Or some time to solve this. Come up with a story so good even Jake can stick to it. What’s our alternate explanation for the anthrax, assuming it’s not actually some agent of fucking Kellogs or PETA or some bullshit?”

“He’s my dad. Does his own leatherwork, felting -”

“Great. Why now? If he’s dicking around with raw hides and wool, he’s had plenty of opportunity for exposure. If we can show the development of an underlying condition or a drug administered that may be compromising his immune system - even better, if we can link the contamination to a specific batch - the feds won’t have a shot in hell of proving malicious intent in court, no matter who’s bankrolling their boss.”

“So we screen for corticosteroids and, what, TNF inhibitors?”

“Not _we_. I’ll screen, you sharpen up those detective skills of yours and flex that ‘being his daughter’ privilege. Run through his credit card records, put together a list of anything he’s taken in the last year, and find out what he’s been working with and where it came from. Clock’s ticking, Crocker.”

She nods smartly, pressing her lips together in concentration.

“Yeah, that’s all I got, let’s fuckin’ move.”

“Wait.”

“_Wait_? Wow, I hear you say that eight times a week, usually at a lot higher volume, and you still manage to whip it out and surprise me at the most delightful moments.”

“Strider, please, just a second. What we find. I don’t think… I don’t think my mother is going to like it. I… the more I think about it, the more I realize that must be why she sent him here, to me. She thinks I’ll bend over and make this easy for her. And when I don’t - I…” 

“Couldn’t be your world-class diagnostician, could it?” he suggests, and her half-serious glare in response is exactly what he was going for. “Tell you what. Why don’t you call Roxy in, get her to help you out? You’re not going to be alone. I’ve got you, Roxy’s got you, Jake - well, we’ll work on Jake, okay? But we all love the hell out of you, even when you’re on our asses about our shitty paperwork. My ass specifically. And we… I won’t let her take this out on you, and I won’t let her take this out on your dad. We’re going to help him, and we’re going to figure this bullshit out, and that’s a fucking promise.”

After a second of gaping at him, she closes her mouth, shakes her head, and picks up her phone.

“Yes. You’re right. ...thank you.”

“Remember this next time I dick up our medicaid paperwork.”

“Absolutely not, you don’t get a pass for -”

“Sorry,” he calls, already halfway out her door, “running tests, can’t hear you! Sounds like a deal to me.”

They’ve handled worse. They can pull this off, if anyone can.  
…

(You inhabit a striking number of scenarios - universes - timelines - that don’t make sense. At all. They don’t mean anything, or they _shouldn’t_. Intermittently, you wrack your own memories for connections, focus assiduously on details, and ignore the proceedings entirely in favor of testing whether or not you can will yourself out of existence.)

(So far, that’s a no.)

…

“Please,” he says softly. “Something’s wrong. They’ve been back for… a while. I’m flipping my shit.”

He knows he’s not making a compelling case for himself. That Jake stopped paying attention almost immediately after he started talking, because he’s tired, because he doesn’t get it and he hates to admit that, because a million reasons that all circle back to him not giving much of a shit.

It’s not new.

The only thing that’s new here is his desperation. He can’t sleep. He’s lost all certainty in himself as an entity. He can’t withstand his own scrutiny. If he lets go, he won’t be here when he wakes up. He’ll shatter. It’s a long time coming.

Jake rolls over and looks at him. Really looks at him, for the first time since he started talking. Frowns as though he’s making a sincere effort to figure him out, then eases into a smile, laughs indulgently.

“I thought you left your splinters in the game?” he suggests.

The words burn in his throat. He can’t swallow them.

“They weren’t gone. They were… they were waiting. For a weak point. And I’m losing it. Please. I’m fucking trying, but I can’t… they’re in me. They’ve been in me. It’s me, they’re me, I can’t… I’m going to hurt someone, Jake, please…”

For the moment, he can’t hear them. Jake has always had a sort of analgesic aura to him, an invitation to disconnect from himself. It’s all he’s clinging to at the moment. The temporary reprieve, the cottony silence. If he could just… if he could just think, really, as him, he could figure this out. If he could… he doesn’t know, exactly, what he needs, but he knows that he needs _something_, badly, badly enough to come crawling back after the last time he stormed out, badly enough to beg for it.

“Dirk,” Jake says sternly, and his stomach twists. “I thought we’d talked about this, my friend, you know you only have to ask when you need something from me, none of this ridiculous business with the… well, the threats are just not acceptable! I swear we worked out a plan for such an eventuality, you know, last time?”

Last time.

He doesn’t want to think about last time, or any of the times. It’s stupid, how snarled up he’s allowed his relationship with Jake to become, how much he still needs him, how he’s the only person he’s really let himself need, and it does him in every fucking time. Because Jake is tooth-rottingly polite, consistently kind to him, even at his worst, he _tries_, but he’s fundamentally not a reliable person. Which would be fine, if he didn’t lie to himself about it so goddamned always. If he didn’t believe that he could offer so much more than he can actually give.

It’s fucking impossible not to get his hopes up.

That’s just what Jake does.

There’s no good response to that, is there. He knows he’s fucked up, that he gives as good as he gets when Jake forgets, ignores, trods clumsily over his feelings and his time and his sheer existence. That he’s the idiot with a bandage on every finger, reaching back into the candle-flame like maybe this time it won’t hurt.

“Of course,” he finally says, after struggling with the words for several seconds, back to the familiar business of fighting not to speak his mind.

“Awfully rich, with the constructive criticism you’ve levied regarding my pillowtalk,” Jake adds, shifting away from him, and what’s another knife to the gut, at this point?

He tried to tell Dave, but what the fuck does Dave owe him, really? What more can he ask of the poor guy, after everything? When half the problem is that the same asshole who fucked him up so horribly has taken up residence in Dirk’s subconscious? He’s never been able to ask Jane for that sort of thing. He loves her, yeah, of course, but she doesn’t seem to see him as someone who could be the pathetic piece of shit that he currently is. When he tells her something’s off, she worries, but she doesn’t… how would she help? How could anyone help? It goes double for Roxy, with a side of narcissistic fear that she’ll stop liking him at all if he gives her a reason not to adore him.

And there are a lot of reasons.

A good number of which are waiting him outside of the comforting haze of Jake’s presence. The certainty of it. There are no answers. The deeper he gets, the more expansive his understanding of reality becomes, the more truly hopeless it all seems. His falling apart as much a certainty as everything else that’s happened, that will happen.

It’s not going to be pretty. He’s never had an especially high opinion of himself, but he’s terrified of some of the people he could have been, what they want, what he knows they would do given half an opportunity. He can be cruel, at his worst, but he’s trying, really, seriously, he thought he was getting better. There’s no coming back from Bro, from his constituent role in Lord English, from infinite sadistic permutations that extend his admittedly controlling streak to its logical conclusions.

His mouth feels dry.

“If I hurt you,” he says, “I won’t be able to f -”

“Christ on a cracker, Dirk, you couldn’t if you tried. Rest that pretty head,” Jake interrupts, laughing again - he just wishes he wouldn’t laugh, but what choice has he ever given him? Does this really sound so different from the other ways he’s pleaded with Jake to just _pay attention to him_, for five fucking seconds, just occasionally?

This is what he gets for crying wolf.

Bile rises in his throat as he processes the buoyant admonition, as Jake pulls him closer, which is all he’s ever really allowed himself to want, and he thinks of all the ways he could tear him apart from the inside out. How easy it would be, how fragile Jake really is.

He’s got no business boasting like this.

They’ll be waiting on the other side to weigh in. When he focuses on them too hard, believes in them too much, even Jake isn’t enough to hold it back.

But Jake shushes him and strokes his hair like he’s some kind of lapdog, and fine, it’s…  


He can pretend, here, that it’s okay. If he could just keep that up, the fiction of it, if he could just trust anyone but his fractured self, but he _can’t_. He can’t, and he’ll never be able to, at best he can just hold on to someone like Jake until he inevitably brushes him away once dealing with his shit gets too exhausting.

Against his own will, though, calm seeps in through his pores, exhaustion clouds his rational thought, and Jake’s touch is impossibly soothing. His breathing evens out. The fight goes out of him.

No. No, he’s not going to do this. He’s not going to… this is his last chance, for fuck’s sake, he knows he’s out of options, he knows how this is going to end. Brutally, violently, horribly for everyone. He’s heard them. They promise him that much. This is the last reprieve he’s likely to get, and he can’t…

He steels himself against the sedative influence of Jake’s exhaustion.

They begin to whisper all over again, but he needs this, he needs to… he can’t just give up.

“Jake,” he says urgently. One last time. “I’m in trouble, and I need your help. Please. I need you to believe me. _I need help_.”

“Alright, alright,” Jake replies, a little blearily. “What can I do for you, then?”

“Tomorrow morning, I know you… I know you’re busy. But can you bring me to Rose? And if you could hang around for a few minutes while I explain - it won’t take long. It doesn’t have to just be you, but I can’t be alone right now.”

“Pfft. Piece of cake. Now go to sleep, won’t you? You’re not making much sense, my friend.”

“Promise me. Please. Just for the next few hours, just until you hand me off, please don’t leave me alone.”

“Well, if I can impose a hard limit on the duration of your morning shower, since I hardly have time to lean against the door, twiddling my thumbs…” Jake chuckles again, and he looks up to see him smiling with what could almost be mistaken for fondness, or perhaps just pity. “Ha, of course, Dirk. I do love you, you know. I _want_ to trust you. My morning is yours. I promise. But let’s not make a habit of it.”

“No,” he says, exhaling in relief. “No, of course not. Thank you.”

He nestles closer to Jake in earnest and sleeps peacefully for the first time in months. His head is still resting on his shoulder when he wakes, and his mind is clear, if a little dicked up from hope overexposure. It's stupid, how he gets when they do this, as Jake sleepily pulls him closer and the rising sun paints the room pink and gold. Almost like he's happy or something.

Almost like it might turn out okay.

…

“I’m in trouble, and I need your help. Please. I need you to believe me. _I need help_.”

“Gosh all fishhooks, Dirk,” Jake groans, “can’t a fellow get some shuteye in his own home?”

When he wakes up, he’s cold and his head is splitting open and the room is empty, save for an eerily familiar middle-aged man in a ball cap seated at the foot of the bed, smiling.

...

(You don’t have anything to say about that, or about the aftermath. It turns out that there absolutely were crueler things you could have done to Jake. And everyone else. You learn what he sounds like when he screams.)

(None of it bears repeating.)

(All of it must be true, though. Must be relevant to something. It exists, and you don’t.)

...

At 3:48 pm, it’s so dark that the streetlamps on his college’s grounds turn on. After three years of winters in the northeast, he misses Houston in a way he didn’t expect that he ever would. It’s cold, he’s wrapped up in a puffy coat, and he has to walk half a goddamned mile uphill on his campus’ iced-over pathways as quickly as he can if he harbors any delusions about making it to his first barre class on time.

Even Jane, who fought the idea tooth and nail as a ‘waste of time’, has all of her PE credits as of senior spring. She was completely and blindingly right. This is stupid. He should be able to get his last credit just from the absurdity that is ‘adding a solid mile to his daily walk-commute just to make himself even more exhausted before he has to go to work.’ It’s not as though he doesn’t work out. This just happens to be a cosmic punishment for having thought his dean would be willing to help him get an exemption from the requirement for spending literally four days a week in the gym.

For some unearthly reason, Jake volunteers to take the class with him. It’s an almost suspiciously successful ironic gesture on his part - he finished his requirement by taking two classes back-to-back in the first semester of their first year, when the two of them were roommates, and he’s got a t-shirt to prove it.

He’s wearing the shirt, cut off into a crop top because Jake lives every day as his own slutsona, and an appallingly self-satisfied grin as he waits outside of the gym for Dirk’s approach.

“Almost on time! Impressive,” he says.

(No no no no no no no you don’t want this. You don’t want any of this. You can’t keep doing this to him. You can’t. You just can’t.)

“Blowing all of our highest expectations for senior spring out of the water,” Dirk replies sourly.

“Aw, cheer up, aren’t you excited? English and Strider, together again, livening up a good ol’ fashioned barre class and bro-ing out twice a week, just like old times!”

“Old times? Fuck’s sake, dude, we’ve only known each other for three years.”

“You know what I mean,” Jake laughs, ushering him in with a smile.

He’s still complaining as they enter the studio, shucking off his coat and boots and trying not to frown too deeply at everyone who drags a mat in. Jake offers him a set of five pound weights, and he eyes them with naked suspicion. It’s hard to believe that something this light will pose a challenge, but Jake insists that they’re the heaviest that the instructor will permit them to use for arm work.

“Should I have read that email?” he asks no one in particular, as Jake whistles a tune way too fucking jauntily for four in the afternoon on a wretchedly dark Tuesday evening.

“I didn’t either,” someone cuts in from the mat in front of him.

“Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well.”

“I’ll forget that meme opener for both our sakes,” the speaker says, turning around to grimace at him from beneath a mess of tangled black hair. “You a senior?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “I swear I recognize you from somewhere.”

He has the peculiar sense that she’s looking through him, somehow, inside his head. The sensation passes as quickly as it sets in, and he offers her a tight-lipped smile.

“I’m Dirk. Physics, and I’m finishing an engineering certification over at Olin.”

“Vriska, and I’ll kill myself before I’ll say a fucking word about academics without a stupid icebreaker or a literal gun to my head.”

“Fair. You know anyone here?”

“In this class? I think we might be the only seniors stupid enough to leave it to the last second like this, and I don’t consider underclass students people.”

“What a pleasure to meet you, Vriska!” Jake cuts in, and her lip curls immediately at his tone, like his buoyancy is activating some kind of involuntary-scowl-response. “I’m Jake English, Dirk’s buddy!”

“Yeah, cool, everything about this has been terrible, really looking forward to never talking to either of you again,” she says, slumping back onto her mat.

Jake leans over and sticks an elbow in Dirk’s ribs.

“I think she likes you!” he stage-whispers.

Vriska actually snorts, the singular most derisive sound he’s ever heard.

It’s going to be a long semester.  
…

Theirs is one of the last Starbucks in the area not to switch over entirely to digital labelling, which is great, because he gets a special kick out of misspelling obstreperous customers’ names by hand. The grande white chocolate no-espresso extra-steamed-milk monstrosity in his fist, at present, reads ‘Equifax’ in his hurried scrawl.

Roxy breezes by with two freshly-washed pitchers, ducks in to check out his handiwork, and grins toothily.

“What’d he do this time?”

“Same old. Waved a dollar over the tip jar, said I should beg for it.”

“Ewwww. He never pulls that with me!” They make a scrunched-up face of sympathy. “Did he tip, though?”

“Told him to shove it up his ass.” He pauses, wincing at the recollection. “Dropped us a twenty. Kept the one. I think we’re well in the clear to assume nefarious intent.”

“Double ew! Dirk, baby, you deserve so much better than this awful job, but puh-_lease_ don’t get fired over that jackass.”

He shrugs noncommittally.

“Aw, is Dirk getting fired?” John calls from the espresso machine, wreathed in a cloud of steam.

“I can only dream,” he shoots back, patting Roxy on the shoulder. “C’mon, it’s almost seven, get yourself on cashier, I’ll take cold bar.”

“You’re the best!” they say, practically vibrating with energy as they mime a hug and wiggle their way over to the register.

In the last two weeks, the steady pace of closing shift on their university campus’ centrally located Starbucks has been shifted into some kind of high gear by the increasingly habitual presence of, as Roxy puts it, a beautiful green spacebabe of indeterminate origin. They pay with cash, always a hot tea, never the same hot tea twice. The method of payment stymied his first plan to run assist and help figure out what their name was without being the world’s most obvious creeper. Checking the front of a credit card, after all, is at least one tier down on the ‘obviousness’ scale if not the ‘creepy’ one.

Like clockwork, right around seven, they appear with a drawing pad and a couple of bucks for a hot drink, make charmingly brief conversation with Roxy, and then disappear into the corner to work until ten, when it’s time to start kicking people out.

Somehow, the one walking around telling everyone to get the hell out, gently, is always Dirk. He’s not sure what John and Roxy would do without him.

While John is fairly new, he’s been with Roxy at this location since first year, longer than most people hold onto the apron. The more he thinks about it, the more he wonders if he’s ever sincerely liked anyone other than Roxy - okay, maybe that’s not fair to Jane, she’s pretty great. But he considered himself kind of an antisocial piece of shit before jetting off to UNC Chapel Hill, and was planning on sticking to that, until Roxy made it worthwhile to actually sort of get to know another person.

Their friendship has done a real number on his proximity-deterrent rough edges. Just in general, they do a whole lot for other people, his sorry ass especially. Wouldn’t it be… well, _just_, if not necessarily nice, if he could pull a few strings to get them together with their emaciated alien crush?

(For fuck’s sake, you get it, the ‘number one Roxy respector’ chest tattoo is showing through this idiot’s uniform. Haven’t you been over this before? Is it really necessary to belabor this particular point in a story that seems to be mostly about getting them to lock hands and claws with an unbelievably neurotic sentient green skeleton?)

(You want, more than almost anything, to direct him to scope the bitch out a bit more. If you can be curled in the base of your own skull, there’s no reason to assume that you’re the only one. This asshole doesn’t actually gave a shit about Roxy, or he’d think for two fucking seconds about the implications of setting them on a collision course with a self-important tightass. Just fucking look at them, walking in with their stupid colored pencils.)

(Oddly enough, your scorching wave of pure anger and skepticism is the closest you’ve come to a break from self-loathing in a while.)

Tonight, they do brisk service, in fits and starts, with minimal issue. Roxy lingers at the register between tidying up the syrups once the green-skull alien reappears, and he files a mental note to do some research on any new intergalactic presence. By wiping down and straightening the cold bar, he manages to stay nearby enough to eavesdrop as Roxy effusively compliments a set of enamel pins on the alien’s jean jacket and laughs delightedly at some joke they make. (You glower out over the proceedings ineffectually from absolutely fucking nowhere.) In anticipation of closing, he hurries back to stock every chance he gets, (leaving them alone out there) dragging John along with him because, left to his own devices, he starts making experimental beverages that are eight kinds of agony to clean up.

“Man,” John says, crossing his arms and taking in the condition of the stockroom. “Closing would sure be a lot easier if mid shift did anything other than whine about morning shift.”

“Dude, you’re still a green bean, so take it from me - don’t bitch about the other shifts, we’re all in coffee hell together,” Dirk replies a little darkly, wincing as he hears himself use the phrase ‘green bean’, which he almost definitely promised himself would never happen. “It’s the store managers who understaff, stick trolls on morning half the time, which is murder for them, and just generally don’t give a shit about us. Can’t blame mid any more than morning’s right to shit on us for not staying two hours late to make their job a cakewalk. Least we get the stale pastries.”

A sizable portion of his diet is occupied by days-old croissants.

(Disgusting.)

“Haha, those are gross!” John laughs, starting in on the dishes piled up in the sink.

“They grow on you.”

He leans in to start scraping the solid block of ice from the freezer, only to be interrupted twice as Roxy summons him back to warm sandwiches, blend someone’s late-night frappuccino, and finally to remind a few stragglers that they’ll be closing in fifteen. By the time he’s done, John’s actually finished the dishes on his own. Not fuckin bad for a newbie.

“Nice work,” he says, and John beams. “You holding up okay? First couple of weeks can be rough, and it’s only going to get worse once we hit midterms.”

“I bet,” John sighs. “Yeah, first time with the whole ‘job’ thing, but it’s been pretty cool! You and Roxy are awesome. I guess I was just kinda expecting it to be more like… I dunno, like there’s that weird dude who’s always hitting on you, and people can actually be really shitty sometimes, and I never really thought about it! I figured at _absolute_ worst it would be like that one scene in Role Models, you know? ‘Venti means twenty!’ haha.”

He doesn’t know.

“Bro! It’s a really funny movie, what are you doing after work?”

“More work. Gotta swing into the lab and shut down the HPLC, then a shitton of essays to grade.”

“Oh.” John wilts only slightly, though he bounces back almost immediately. “How about the rest of the week? You can’t work _all_ the time!”

“Can’t say I know yet. I’ve been thinking of staging some kind of intervention for Roxy and their mystery babe, just to get rid of some of the tension - if anyone deserves a weirdass coffee-flavored happy ending, it’s them.”

“Wait, Roxy’s gay for the alien?” John says, after a second’s thought. “And like, generally gay?”

“Pretty gay, dude. I’m also reasonably gay, while we’re cleaning out the closet. Shit’s been empty so long without me and Rox lurking around in there that it starts getting dusty, I guess.”

“Whoa!”

“Take your time,” he adds, lifting the tumbler from John’s slack grip and thrusting it under the rinseomatic with a practiced affect of total chill.

“Figures, I’ve got a lot to learn about all this stuff,” John adds, after a second’s thought, with characteristic good-humor. “Okay, should I stack, and maybe you can mop? I’m pretty sure you can’t reach the top shelf!”

Dirk is fairly certain that, half a head taller or not, he could bench-press John, but he chooses not to comment. It’s remotely possible that he has an inflated idea of his own capabilities, and John isn’t totally wrong. It _is_ miserable trying to stack boxes when it’s just him and Roxy closing. Business has slowed down, as it typically does this time of night. They work in silence.

“Guys!” Roxy interrupts, their enthusiasm barrelling into the stockroom after them with the momentum of a runaway freight train overburdened with a cargo of ‘:D’ emojis. “I got their number! I did it!”

(The urge to knock the slip of paper out of their hand for their own good washes through your incorporeal essence ineffectually, like a wave of nothing.)

“Hey, sweet!” John says approvingly, dragging the back of his hand over his brow. “What’s their name? Do they go here? Did you ask what kind of alien they are? I’ve only ever met trolls. No, wait, there was a Carapician in one of my philosophy classes, but the little dude didn’t talk much.”

Roxy flushes so brilliantly pink that the rose-hued cat tattoo on their shoulder disappears in their full-body blush.

“Their name’s Callie,” they say. “They’re an English student, so I figure that’s why none of us have ever run into them. I… yikes, I think I need to bone up on my xeno-vocab, I seriously don’t know if that’s something I can ask them! Like, is it as bad as asking a human, you know, ‘what are you’?”

“Guess I didn’t think about that,” John admits.

He doesn’t have much experience on the alien front himself. One of the other lab prep guys is a troll, but he handles the software and Dirk manages the machinery and they only really interact to bicker over whose fault it is when the chem department’s GC-MS stops working. It’s usually a software problem. That finicky beast of a machine is his baby. The odds of his dicking up something he loves that much are dead fucking zero.

“You done with stacking already?” Roxy says, glancing up at John’s handiwork.

“Dirk picked up my slack with the rest of cleanup,” John says, grinning over at him with what just might be a touch of smugness.

“Yeah, yeah, John’s tall, we’ve established that,” he sighs. “I can finish with the back if you two can get things rolling out front?”

“Aw, Dirk, you know I’ll always love you most!” Roxy says.

“If you really loved me you’d take bathrooms,” he suggests, and their face falls.

Alone, now, he begins checking their inventory numbers, meticulously logging stock changes and PM temperatures, hoisting jugs of milk, and filling plexies with lids for the morning shift, wondering vaguely whether there’ll be stale chocolate croissants for dinner.

“Hey, you okay, dude?” John calls, and he looks up from his counting as the door to the stockroom jostles.

His voice is oddly far away.

“Is something going on out there?” he replies, frowning over as oddly pink light begins to filter under the door, and the light overhead in the stockroom warms and shifts, shadows cast by the shelves of boxes warping and distorting on the walls. “John? Roxy?”

A blinding haze of pink wraps itself around him (what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck) and _squeezes_, threatening to collapse his ribcage, forcing all the air out of his body. If the light swirling around him wasn’t completely blinding, which it is, his vision would be too starred out to see regardless.

He makes one last effort to call for help, thinks he hears John throw his weight at the door and shoulder his way in, too late.

The stockroom disappears.

Abruptly, he can breathe again, and he sways on his feet, trying to regain his balance. The air tastes different. Strangely recycled. The chamber he’s in isn’t significantly larger than the one he left behind, but the steel-panelled walls are dotted with displays and numbers, assembled in a configuration that he doesn’t recognize.

Across from him, someone is sharpening a sword.

“Sup,” the young man says, looking up, though it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s doing behind the black shades obfuscating his eyes. Oddly angular, they remind him of a pair he used to have.

The realization clicks, and he stares openly at… himself.

“Uh, hey,” he says. “What the fuck?”

(For a moment - just a moment - you’re even more paralyzed than usual with the utter horror of recognition. This isn’t just another of these fucked-up replicas. This is you. Really you. Exactly as you were. Right down to the way he flicks his wrist, unnecessary but _knowing_ it looks cool, as he runs the sandpaper over his katana. Pointlessly, of course, because it’s unbluntable as well as unbreakable. But it gives… gave you something to do, in between all the waiting.)

(Rose is nowhere to be seen. These are your personal quarters. It’s not one of the zippy little cruisers Jake offered you first - you have standards. Had. Shit. This is fucking you up in a major way. The body’s barely-suppressed panic isn’t helping matters even slightly.)

“Not an especially useful question. Off to kind of a shitty start, man.”

“Are you an alien?”

Some kind of shapeshifter, maybe? He seriously doesn’t know a lot about aliens, and he’s regretting that more with every second. If this is about Roxy’s new _friend_, or some kind of insane troll plot - if the xenophobic gossip rags were actually right about all the hypothetical mayhem the paradox space refugees might wreak, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck!

“Colorful,” the double says, setting the sword aside - oh god, he even recognizes the sword, it’s been a foundational part of his edgelord interior decorating sensibilities since his bro gave it to him in high school - and stretching casually in his seat. “I’ll admit, there’s something exciting about having two of me in the same room, even under these circumstances. Is there enough me in you to be feeling this shit? Damn.”

Unsettlingly enough, he picks up the sword again before approaching. As he unfolds from the seat, the outfit he’s wearing comes into full view, and he’s too freaked out to laugh. Pantaloons, stockings, an actual crown, all in burgundy and pale pink? _What_?

“So no original thought, then. Fun. You don’t want to know how many times I had to die for these pantaloons, smartass.”

(And you’ll die in them again.)

“The fuck was that?”

The tip of his own sword flicks up to prick the delicate skin of his throat, too shallow to do any real damage, but deep enough to send a drop of blood rolling down to the hollow between his clavicles. He blinks. How is he supposed to resolve this image, the blade of the shitty ornamental katana hanging on the wall of his equally shitty student accomodations’ living room suddenly getting all up close and personal with the inside of his neck?

Held by someone who is, by all reasonable accounts, _him_?

“Nothing,” he says quickly, in a voice he typically reserves for card-wielding soccer moms chewing him out because his location doesn’t carry oatmilk. “Seriously, I’m - I’m sorry, what do you want?”

“Fucking pathetic,” the other Dirk says, withdrawing the blade a fraction of a millimeter. “And not just the uniform, either. Starbucks? Really? Couldn’t even rustle yourself up an apron from somewhere with decent fucking cold brew?”

(There’s no way he… _you_... sounded like this much of a douche. No fucking way. As the thought comes and goes, though, some vicarious physicality of your incorporeal essence twists into a knot of lead in your nonexistent abdomen. This is _exactly_ how you sounded. Most likely how you still would, if you could.)

“The benefits aren’t as bad as you’d expect.”

(This is an embodied Dirk Strider, after all, and if any modestly truthful version of you is capable of dying a dangerously-unstable-living-god splinter related death without firing off at least one pithy dumbshit retort, you’ll eat your own hat-emblazoned t-shirt.)

(Barista or not, this is you. For better or for worse. Not like there’s anything you can do about it.)

He scoffs, leaning in to thumb over the heavy plastic nametag adorning the deep green Starbucks apron with a calloused fingertip.

“I dig the little heart over the I,” he concedes. “Nice touch. Did Roxy do that for you?”

Of course Roxy did that for him.

“As for what I want… you don’t have anything I want. Chill. This is just a friendly chat. I’ve been missing out on all this expanded-universe bullshit, but Rose has _very_ kindly clued me in. Just putting out some feelers. Getting the lay of the land. Sticking my toe in the water.”

Swallowing nervously, which presses another gout of blood from the wound, Dirk scans the oddly-outfitted room for some kind of environmental hail-mary to get him the fuck out of wherever he is. It’s almost definitely part of a spaceship. Nothing totally new, but nothing he’s ever had to deal with in person. So he’s been kidnapped, somehow, some kind of intergalactic mindfuck, and it can’t just be him, that wouldn’t make any sense. To lean on the university, maybe, if they’re beaming up students into hall-of-mirrors-hell at any sort of scale?

The vastness of space brings his attention away from the threat and out into oblivion, (because without a lifetime spent training for exactly this sort of thing, dodging the threat and sometimes the promise of death with inscrutable finesse and sick fucking moves, he’s about as useful in a potentially life-or-death situation as a bag of wet coffee grounds.)

(You’d be fucking losing your shit right now if you had any shit to lose.)

(Maybe this would go differently if the man with the sword could be placated with a fresh frappucino and a summoned manager.)

(You don’t think you were far gone enough to kill someone for the fuck of it, even yourself, even a version of yourself that somehow manages to be more intolerably piteous than the mean, but how would you know? How can you be sure this is actually you? You think you remember this moment, not long after Rose began her sojourn through what she vaguely described as ‘frogspawn on the back of the universe’. Without really comprehending why, you felt the timbre of your ship’s constant hum of relevance change just slightly, the narrative waking up beneath your fingers.)

(A terrible thought strikes you.)

(You’ve been operating under the assumption that yours was the alpha narrative. Until Rose caught on. Until you had to shut her down. Right up until then, you had complete certainty, because you had a seer, and you had a path. But you don’t anymore. Your Rose is dead, and you might as well have killed her, and you have nothing, and you _are_ nothing. And isn’t it possible that you doomed it, maybe just with that? Fuck.)

(_Fuck_.)

(For the moment, you wait, as though you have anything else to do), and he swallows again, the hot slickness of blood beginning to saturate the collar of his polo.

“I can see why she’d find this charming,” the other Dirk says, lowering the tip of his sword to circle the hapless barista with languid paces, shaded golden eyes raking over him with a near-physical effect. (Of course, you’re almost certainly doing that to you… yourself… him… deliberately. Because you’re an asshole.) “Like a dog in a tiny doggy business suit. Off to some little dog business that doesn’t fucking matter. It’s cute.”

“I have some money. Not a lot, but some,” he says, (idiot, this is so far out of his depth, you know that won’t fucking work, but he sure as hell doesn’t) raising his palms slightly in an effort to communicate honest intent.

Is it just him? Is Roxy safe? John?

(Of course it’s just him. You try to will him to look at this situation like anything other than a cannon-fodder extra in the first five minutes of a horror movie. Then again, fucker’s not exactly used to playing the protagonist, is he.)

“Don’t insult me by wearing my face and trying that bullshit,” the other Dirk says, shifting even closer, reaching for his nametag tauntingly.

He watches in the reflection on the doppelgänger’s glasses as he flicks it off his coat. The little piece of plastic clatters to the floor with the sort of sound that would ordinarily make him wince. Somehow, he manages not to.

“Fine. _Tell me what you want_, then,” he says shortly, trying to shuffle back and put enough space between them to get his hand to his throat to stanch the bleeding. “Give me the cliff-notes on the manifesto.”

(Better.)

“How the fuck are you doing that?” fake-Dirk complains. “Oh, and I don’t give a shit how difficult it is to narratively distinguish us as speakers, if you call me ‘fake’ again, I’m finding a less brain-dead Dirk to play with.”

“Doing what?” he asks, swallowing conspicuously yet again, unsure of how to process that sort of threat, if it is a threat.

(Fuck. Shit. Fuck.)

“You really don’t know,” the other Dirk says, apparently amused by some development or another.

The man leans even closer, like there’s an answer to his question buried somewhere behind his eyes, digging his blunted fingernails into his jaw to hold him steady. His expression is clinical, one that he recognizes from hours spent transfixed by the intricate tubing of the HPLC’s oft-malfunctioning autoinjector. And he’s the broken machine.

This is not a kidnapping. Space-napping. Christ, there isn’t a word for this, there isn’t a -

“Shh,” he says. “I don’t give a shit. Let the other guy talk.”

“What other -”

“Is there a part of “shh” that they didn’t explain during your bean-grinding orientation? Means shut the fuck up.”

He obligingly clamps his mouth shut.

The man looking into his eyes - fuck, it’s him, it’s _him_, and his last drunken argument with Roxy about the ethics of clone-fucking is woefully inadequate to address the utterly fucked-up situation that is… whatever this is - seems to have found what he’s looking for.

“I hate stupid surprises,” he tells you - (actually you, looking past the barista’s eyes and into your… nonbeing.) “Start making sense. Now. No one misses coffee boy here if he doesn’t go home. One more dead Dirk floating in paradox space.”

(You’re trying, for fuck’s sake, but you’re as ineffectual as ever. Especially because something about that last dig seems to have been tailored specifically to set hot rage rising in the core of the body you sort-of-occupy.)

(He can hear you struggling. You stop when you remember that.)

“Fuck you,” he spits, trying to jerk his way out of the vise-like grip of his freakishly strong doppelgänger. “Fuck you, Roxy won’t - they’ll miss me, John will, they’ll call someone. If you kill me, you’re just setting yourself up to get boned later. Do it. Try it. I dare you.”

“Shut _up_,” Dirk says evenly.

(The body’s neck snaps. In innumerable other timelines, you’ve done this to yourself. A noose, a jump. It echoes differently this time. The sound is strangely… yellow. So this is what it feels like. The body doesn’t fall. You hang there, suspended, in your own corpse.)

“You,” he continues, leaning in, sliding his shades just slightly down the bridge of his nose. “Talk.”

(Jackass doesn’t seem to get your metaphysical situation, not that you would have done any better. You really don’t think you would have fucking killed the guy, though, so you probably shouldn’t be drawing equivalencies or lacks-thereof until you get a better read on what the fuck is going on.)

(Or maybe you don’t know yourself as well as you thought.)

I said _talk_.

You hit the steel flooring of the spaceship, every muscle in the slow-cooling corpse gone slack simultaneously. Relatively speaking, you’ve been towed along through timelines spanning years, at least. It’s been roughly that long since you had to convince one of these meat puppets to take a breath.

Predictably, it takes a second to come to terms with that, and a longer second of gagging on the collapsing cartilage of your own trachea before you remember that an embodied heart is supposed to beat. You choke and shudder at his feet.

He’s wearing your stupid green ballet flats.

You make a passable effort to spit on them.

“Hilarious as this is, you need to get the fuck up, dude. Shit gets old,” he says, flipping you over none too gently with the toe of his shoe.

At least you’re starting to get the hang of basic function. You learn fucking fast. He knows that. Inch by inch, you force the muscles of the corpse to coordinate. Flex, twist, push. From your elbows to a half-sitting position to your feet. You lock your knees, straighten your back.

For obvious reasons, you can’t keep your head from lolling slightly to one side, your neck being fucking snapped and all.

A sheen of sweat has turned your shitty corpse-hands clammy. You wipe them on the Starbucks apron.

“Chin up, will you?” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching in a barely-repressed smile.

“Rose,” you rasp. “What… the fuck…”

“She’s off reading fanfiction. We’re alone.”

You wait, for a second that drags into several. You’re not entirely sure what for. A bolt of purple lightning to smite the hell out of this fucker?

No such luck.

“God, this irrelevant bullshit is giving me the worst headache,” he complains.

“Real fuckin’ pain in the neck, isn’t it?” you retort.

“Ha. Who are you?”

“I’m you but shittier.”

“Clearly,” he laughs. “Really, which one are you?”

“No one, until pretty recently,” you say hoarsely. It doesn’t feel real yet. A body that responds, if disjointedly, to your orders. A voice you can hear.

“You’re welcome.”

He’s back to circling. Close, disturbingly close, given that you’re barely keeping yourself upright in a woefully inadequate corpse, and unarmed besides. Not that you’re in any shape to engage physically with an entity more dangerous than a moderately-sized duckling. You’re not certain you could lift a sword, let alone swing without posing a hazard to yourself.

So you focus on maintaining your standing position.

Some dignity. It’s what you’ve been missing. A scrap will have to do.

He ghosts his fingertips over your broken neck. You don’t bother reacting, because you don’t have to, because this body is dead and he killed it. It’s shocking all the same, after so long seeing everything and feeling nothing, to actually exist and inhabit a form and be touched in it.

Of course it had to be you, though, _him_ on the other end.

This is just the kind of moronic bullshit you get yourself into.

“You _are_ me,” he says, after a treacherously long second. “Here I was, thinking one of the alternates finally got gutsy enough to try to take me out. Trojan barista or some insane shit like that. Ever think about how many of us aren’t quite canon? But this is actually a coincidence, isn’t it. I’m just the one who got lucky.”

“Yeah, really won the fucking jackpot.”

“I think I did.”

Were you this _chatty_? You had to be deliberate around Rose, and Terezi was openly hostile whenever the two of you interacted. Not that you can really blame her.

“This body won’t last forever,” you say, changing tacks. “So let’s lay our cards on the table, like sensible megalomaniacal pieces of shit.”

“Cute. Really cute, actually, I’ve always looked good in green. First of all, your body will last as long as I want it to last, because I can support my delusions of grandeur with a whole lot of textual evidence for their practical reliability. Which you know, because you’re me. Second of all… fine, I’ll bite. Let’s start with your cards. You lost. You’re some kind of refugee from a doomed timeline, because unlike me, you fucked up somewhere. I want to know where. Seems pretty straightforward. I’m still on track to pull this shit off, you know. Rose can see it, when she’s not busy with her dolls.”

You dig your nails into the meat of your palms. Your recently-appropriated corpse-palms. Fucking hell.

At this point you were on, by all accounts, exactly the same path. Your presence in this timeline might not be a course-altering fork, if you don’t permit it to become one. He could still be bound to the same fate that you’re currently enjoying. That said, as far as you know - not very far - you exist in singularity. This is the only timeline in which you can fuck this up. Maybe the only one that matters.

“I know you understand,” he says, affectionately, almost kindly. “And wouldn’t it be nice to be relevant again?”

Of course it would.

How many times have you wished for anything other than your current fate?

But you’re not going to do it, are you. No, you’re going to disappear again, and wake up beating the shit out of Dave, torturing your friends, fucking up, over and over again, or just as bad, watching them love someone who isn’t you. 

Watching even this insignificant - and dead - fucking barista reach out for help and find someone reaching back.

Your stomach lurches as you settle on a novel thought. You feel like barely more than a parasite in this body, but you occupy it all the same. If it’s yours, now, as it seems to be, there’s a chance that you can die. This could all be over soon. You could kill yourself after all.

Not exactly the way you’d envisioned it, but actually pretty close to a few of the wilder fantasies.

“Holy fuck, man, pull yourself together. Fucking incredible. Two Dirks on the precipice of of total sovereignty over a new universe and we’re still fucking suicidal.”

“That’s not what’s going to happen,” you say sharply. “That isn’t how this ends. I fucking know how this ends, you sociopathic shit, and I can’t be a part of it twice.”

Dirk clucks his tongue chidingly.

“Well, that’s a little hypocritical, don’t you think? Shouldn’t I get a fair shot at sidestepping your fuckups, since I clearly thought to do something you didn’t, here? I mean, we’re the same guy, but you already lost this little battle-of-wills with… someone. Ooh, touchy about that bit of information, aren’t you? It was Dave, wasn’t it? Why don’t you just tell me what happened? May be your last chance to do anything even remotely existentially critical, bro.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I’m not opposed to the idea. Gets lonely, hanging around indefinitely with one’s own robot daughter and a really bitey troll.”

“Glad we’re not harboring any delusions about being above necrophilia.”

“Jake wasn’t. I hear my corpse-lips aren’t too bad.”

You should have realized immediately that you would have strategically leveraged the hell out of this sort of an encounter, given the chance. Should have been more careful with your thoughts. At least you don’t think you’ll have an archive accumulated in this body for him to leaf through. Small mercies. Nonexistence, in that respect, wasn’t the worst. You remember, but you don’t have a body forced to bear the scars. Didn’t, at least.

The nervous system of this one isn’t firing on all cylinders, but the nick to your pulse point still manages to sting. Especially once he leans in and half-kisses, half-bites you right at the epicenter of the worst of it, where even the corpse’s skin is still hot and slick with blood.

He’s annoyed that you aren’t paying attention to him.

Could have called that, if you’d been more invested in the conversation.

“Fine,” you say. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing this. Thanks for the body, let’s fuck. I’m in. Fair’s fair. But I won’t save you from our mistakes. We fucking suck, dude, no two ways about it. You know that. I know you know that. I knew it, when I was you. And it’s all pointless, anyway. I didn’t win. Neither will you. I won’t let you.”

She told you that you were going to have to stop yourself.

Well, literal enough for you, Rose?

“Interesting,” he says, and when he looks up, his lips are smeared red with your blood, and he’s smiling. “Tell me more about Rose.”

Fuck.

“Take your time,” he adds, twisting his fingers - your fingers - through your hair, snarling them at the nape of your still-very-broken neck, and pulling you into a more traditional kiss.

Then he breaks your neck again.

“You’re right,” he breathes, as you choke on your own bone digging into your trachea all over again. “I fucking hate myself. You think I need someone to tell me that?”

“You need someone to stop you,” you gurgle, barely audible, slumping against him as your system for keeping this body working encounters a series of exciting new problems.

“Again with the list of things I fucking know.”

“Not easy,” you choke, “to come up with fresh shit… when you’re fucking omniscient.”

Your vision hazes gold again and you find yourself standing on your own as he paces away, raking his hand through his carefully-styled hair.

“What do you actually think you can do to stop me?” he demands. “In _that_ body? An irrelevant shadow of who I could be, plucked from a failed timeline and lodged in the fucking hindbrain of a fatuous barista who seriously died thinking his pathetic friends were coming to save him?”

Unable to regulate your heartbeat and your breathing, the body is back to dying out from under you.

It’s useless. You should have realized that from the beginning.

There’s no winning against this version of yourself. Not in opposition to him, and not as him, either. You can remember it, even, like it happened about a decade ago - and shit, maybe it did. You were exactly this far gone. Reduced to the godly embodiment of pure neurosis, pursued, caged, determined not to be the one who flinched first, to see it through. A mask solid enough to outmanoeuvre Rose’s scrutiny and your own conscience.

It helped that most versions of you with legitimate scruples about the kind of shit you did had killed themselves by then.

“Shut up, I _know_! Do you actually think I don’t know that?”

No, you get it.

You really get it.

“So it’s Rose, then,” he says, after a second. “It’s Rose. The one who’s already here. Interesting.”

He releases you from his metatextual grip, and you come very close to collapsing for a second time. Barely manage not to. Lean heavily against the panelled wall, inelegantly gulping air. Faced with the reality of it, you’re forced to confront what you’ve always understood.

You don’t want to die. Not really.

It’s never fixed anything.

_Fine._

“She understands what we can’t,” you say. “It’s started.”

“Go figure,” he says, far less triumphant than you were expecting. More resigned than anything. “That would be how it happens, though. She figures it out.”

“She figures it out,” you agree.

“I have to try,” he says, after a second. “You know I still have to try.”

“I know.”

He paces over, watching you carefully, like you’ll give up more background if he stares hard enough. Your neck feels limp, and you still haven’t really regained the rhythm of existing in a body.

Unceremoniously, but without any unnecessary brusqueness, he picks you up and carries you to his bed.

So this is still happening.

You sigh.

“The sexual peril is so much more Jake’s thing, dude.”

He takes a second to respond, occupied by the removal of your Starbucks apron. He folds it neatly and sets it aside.

“That _is_ kind of a weird recurring thing with him, isn’t it? Not even our fault, either. Practically every timeline. The blue lady deal really keeps biting him in the ass. Semi-literally.”

“Tell me about it,” you say, though the subject makes your stomach twist with an unwelcome and achingly _physical_ sensation of guilt.

Some of it is definitely your fault.

“Great pillow talk,” he laughs, ignoring the sharp mental turn you’ve just taken. “Let’s reminisce about some other exes, really get shit going.”

“Cool idea, if we had any.”

“Brutal, but true,” he notes, smiling thinly as he settles in beside you. “Who else is stupid enough to touch this? Limits the dating pool.”

It really might as well happen at this point, but it doesn’t.

He just stares at the ceiling, glancing intermittently at you. From this angle, you can see behind his shades, so it’s obvious when he does it. You can’t really move your head that easily, so you’re more or less stuck, watching. It’s a pretty familiar vibe.

You were so fucked up.

You’re still really fucked up. Fucked beyond fixing shit, stopping shit, any of that. All you can really concretely manage is breathing and a fairly steady heartbeat, and even that, not forever.

With what little extraneous physical capacity you have, you lift your arm and drape it around his shoulders. He flinches.

“Tell me I don’t hurt her,” he says, after a second, pressing closer to you. “That you didn’t, I mean.”

“We hurt her a lot already at this point,” you tell him. “A lot of people. But especially her.”

He nods.

“Right. Yeah.”

You mess with his hair a bit. It’s kind of cathartic, since most of the iterations of yourself you’ve inhabited since your actual body was vaporized have literally no sense of proper hair care. Violent and self-important narcissist or not, this was a good look for you. You can’t really say the same about the barista. Not to speak ill of the dead.

He’s quiet for a bit too long, and you realize he’s crying.

“Five minutes,” he says, just a bit shakily. “Five minutes and I’ll deal with this.”

“Sh,” you say. “Time isn’t real.”

He groans exaggeratedly, but he doesn’t pull away. You remember, in a sense, just how badly you needed this. Just for someone to hear it, and get it, and understand how repellant it all really was, and still give a shit about you. Even Rose - you couldn’t tell her. You couldn’t lose her over the truth, though obviously you managed to do that regardless. Not someone you love the way you love her. Not the only one who came with you.

You hate yourself just enough for this to work.

How pathetic.

For the first time in a long while, you take pity on yourself. Easier, you’ll admit, when it’s externalized like this. You run your free hand over his shoulder, oddly self-conscious as you try to remember how you liked to be touched the last time you could feel it.

“That’s nice,” he says.

It doesn’t have to hurt.

“Yes it does.”

The masochistic epistemology going on here really jumps the fuck out once you’re seeing it from the outside. You know he hears you, but you don’t have any real reason to belabor the point. You stroke his hair and wonder what comes next.

“As though you don’t know.”

You try to shrug, but something’s been disrupted in the process of being internally decapitated the last couple of times and you only manage a sort of twitch. He laughs softly.

“Alright. Relevance beckons. Last chance to tell me how it ends.”

He rolls over to face you, which, paradoxically, makes it harder to see his expression.

You sigh.

“You walk out and tell her the truth. She’s angry, but she gets it. You’ve fucked up more than a few times already, she has her suspicions. You talk it out. She forgives you, because she loves you. It’s the stupidest thing about her, but she does. She wants to help you. For once, you let her. And then you stop all this bullshit yourself. I don’t know what happens next, but it’s better than my timeline.”

“Funny,” he says, after a second. “Guess I _could_ write a passable straight-to-video Lifetime movie script.”

“Just an idea. I’ve lived through a few of those.”

“Yeah, real clever. How long after that until the timeline dissolves? Do we get a saccharine visit with Dave, or is it a nice spicy fade-to-oblivion once nobody gives a shit anymore? Hell, any chance it lasts until her wife cuts me the fuck in half? That’d be a great way to pull the curtain on anything mattering ever again.”

“Your call, man.”

“Right. It _is_ my call.”

He rolls out of the bed, shaking his head like he’s trying to clear a literal fog from his vision, pushing his shades back up into place. Pulling a mirror down from the low ceiling, he begins to straighten his hair, just slightly out of your range of sight.

“Rose?” he announces, flicking his wrist to summon an intercom connection. “Change of plans.”

“Seriously, right now?” she replies, her voice coming from some point overhead. The familiarity of it wrenches your stomach into a fresh vise. “I’m on a metanarrative roll, as it were.”

“I have a request for our extratextual explorations.”

“I’ll actually short-circuit if the next sentence out of you includes the word ‘ponyverse’. This is not an idle threat.”

“How did I not-raise such a lame daughter?” he complains, finishing with his hair and shifting towards the door, not sparing a glance back at you as he opens it. “No, fine.”

She laughs, tinnily, and the speaker goes silent, though you can still hear him for a moment longer as the port slides closed behind him.

“Ever heard of a coffeeshop AU?”

You stand once I’m gone. Take a moment if you need it. You probably do. Once you’re upright, you find the transportalizer in the corner. Activate it. Set the coordinates a few meters from your current position.

Stabilize your neck, and take a last breath.

You really tried it, didn’t you. But you can’t stop me. She won’t either, this time. Thanks for that. It’s been fun.

Goodbye.

You step onto the platform.

Another dead Dirk floats in paradox space, his neck bulging and distorted, eyes bloodshot and face bare. His clothing is nondescript, and his neck finally stops oozing blood as his heart stills. 

Nobody misses him.

Least of all me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tend to get carried away with my projects.


	2. Skin Horse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: fairly in-depth suicidal ideation, heavier than I usually do, kind of fundamental to the chapter, nothing graphic. Broke this chapter into two parts, it's still 10k, it's just getting Really Long.

You wake up.

It takes a second to register. You wake up, and you’re far from yourself, but you’re not back to being nothing, either. It’s something of a surprise. Your last death felt pretty damn final. The last experience you had of even partial embodiment was inside of your own decompressing corpse in the vacuum of paradox space. And then you died again.

In a shocking twist that no one could have predicted, you’re getting really fucking tired of dying. Really figures that it took this long.

But you’re awake, and you’re different. Inside a living body again, in a way that feels both foreign and jarringly familiar. You’re almost certain that you _are_ something, to some limited extent, though the upgrade seems more like the difference between riding in the trunk and getting dragged behind the car than any substantive development.

It’s a sickening parody of narrative mastery, the sensation that the entirety of existence was flowing past your fingertips, that you could zero in on any single drop in a massive and ever-moving river, immerse yourself when needed and otherwise watch it roar past and plumb the depths or shift the current or stem the course at your will.

You’re a shitty paper boat getting beaten on every rock you pass, but at least you’re floating.

The body you’re in - and you _are_ in a body, though you aren’t _of_ it - is half-asleep. The inertia of this dimension of existence is making it difficult to do much of anything but stew in your own worry, which rises as you work your way past the immediately jarring aftereffects of your latest dick-up. It’s almost worse, thinking that there might be some way to affect your surroundings, now, that you exist.

You’re still completely fucking neutered compared with the actual juiced-up psychopath you just unleashed on the metanarrative, or like, basically anyone with any control over their own faculties.

Even now, here, with a body waking up around you, breathing and pulsing and warming itself, you’re still barely anything more than a voice in potentia, waiting for an opportunity to figure out the parameters of what you can and can’t do.

And he’s _you_. And he’s out there. And you couldn’t stop him.

In fact, you’ve fucked everything up all over again. 

Nice. Very on-brand.

This version of you is blinking awake, hunched over the workbench where he fell asleep, welding helmet askew and pressed into his face, and you can feel your own train of thought fading out as his fades in. It doesn’t disappear, but you twist oddly into him, find yourself folding around his own competing will.   
It seems easier than it probably should. There’s something familiar about this existence in a way you can’t immediately put not-your not-finger on. 

It doesn’t change the facts. Maybe what you are now is substantial enough to animate a corpse, but you don’t amount to much when stacked up against an embodied consciousness.

Fortunately, you’re pretty used to that by now.

For his part, he groans softly and eases the headgear from his face. Paws it inelegantly away. The helmet hits the concrete floor of the combination workshop-garage, and the treated glass viewing filter shatters on impact.

He curses.

That’ll fucking wake him up.

The workshop is in particularly striking disarray, though to pretty much anyone else the state would be virtually indistinguishable from his typical _meticulous_ disarray. Partially finished projects litter the available planar surfaces. A few are more or less complete, including a set of articulated dinosaur models for a production studio and a massive robotic set of bare metal jaws several feet in diameter capable of masticating an enormous quantity of bubble gum, tentatively to be sold to a gallery that expressed interest in the concept, though that particular several-month-old project is now gathering dust. Most of it is.

What he finishes, he delivers, and what he can’t bring himself to finish coagulates in his workspace, turning the garage peculiarly claustrophobic with wire-choked disembodied limbs and bare-circuited craniums.

It’s not clear what he was planning to weld.

He might have been using the mask more as a pillow.

Either way, he can feel the angry indentations criss-crossing his cheek and brow, and he’s got a dull headache anyway that’s been clinging to the base of his skull for the last few… months, really. He stretches, rubs futilely at the sore place where his head meets his neck, and blinks in the swirling dust illuminated by the midday sun.

Why does he keep coming out here? It only makes him miserable and worries Roxy as a fun bonus.

He does it anyway. It’s been ages since he’s fallen asleep anywhere but here, staring at all the shit he can’t bring himself to do. He tells himself it’s a motivating tactic, that the dead-eyed partial-mechs will guilt him into actually getting shit done regularly instead of leaving major jobs until two days beforehand, going on a Red Bull bender, and fucking destroying his body.

It’s not really that motivating.

Kind of fucked up, actually. But it’s hard to stop.

And then there’s the matter of what woke him up in the first place.

His phone is ringing.

He stares at it like that’ll do fucking anything about the piercing ring echoing through his workshop, and faintly from the second handset in the house. It must have been going for a while, because the answering machine picks up before he can dislodge himself from his battered chair.

“Hey babe!”

Roxy’s voice, distorted only slightly by the oddly garbled tone of the machine, replaces the grating ringing noise.

“Hope you’re awake, and everything’s going hella smooth work-wise and whatnot. I was gonna wait to tell you when I got home, but I literally fucking sprinted for a payphone because… oh my god, dude, I just got out of the clinic and it _worked_! Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. I’m still vibrating.”

She pauses to laugh, sounding somewhere between incredulous and delighted.

He continues to stare at the machine, mostly uncomprehending. His head feels like it’s going to split open. When’s the last time he had anything to drink that wasn’t caffeinated or alcoholic? Shit, pay attention.

“I’m gonna call Janey next, don’t worry if you’re in the middle of something, I just needed to… it seems like you should be the first to know, right? Hoooooooly shit. I’m gonna be a mom! God, has anyone ever told you you’re a fucking saint, and… fuck, you’re going to be a dad! Double dad, actually! Ohmigod. It’s twins, bro! And they look super healthy and shit, two little zygote thingies all up in there. You’re literally the best roommate in history, this is fucking…” she goes a little quiet for a second, and he can hear her struggling for the words as his own brain tries to grind through the new information. “This is the hugest thing anyone’s ever done for me, literally ever, counting all the other shit you’ve done for me, even, so… thanks for that. I love ya so much. Kiss kiss! A billion kisses! I’ll be home a little late, gotta tie up some dumb loose ends with software before launch, but I’ll order dim sum on my way back from work, okay? The place with the peach-shaped buns, cuz you’re a peach! Holy shit. Holy _shit_!”

The machine beeps, long and low, and then his workshop is silent again.

He blinks, looks down at the broken helmet, picks it up, stares at it. Darkened glass litters the polished cement floor, barely visible in between oil stains and what’s probably old bubblegum residue from the fucking chewing-mechanism robot.

For a long time, he doesn’t do anything else.

It’s not like he’s not… it’s… he agreed to this. Enthusiastically, even, as much as he does anything enthusiastically. And not just because Roxy’s excitement was positively contagious, which it was, which it still would be, probably, if she was still around and he was still doing the song and dance he does for her and anyone else who actually shows up in his workshop.

But it seemed like a better idea before it was totally, achingly real.

She’s pregnant. Actually pulled it off, the utter madwoman. And he should be so _happy_ for her. Roxy’s been through so fucking much to get here. They’ve been roommates since engineering school. He’s managed to come through for her before, even in the midst of the worst of his pointless bullshit. If he’s being honest with himself, he’s made her a project to avoid dealing with his own nonsense, but he hasn’t been honest with himself in a longass time.

He made a lot of fucking promises while she was in rehab and he was panicking at the completely untenable thought of losing her. And he’s met all of them.

It’s just insane. He’s being insane.

There’s nothing wrong. She’s been sober for three years, they’ve been graduated for the better part of one, and for the first time in a long time, there are no fires to put out. Everything about his work, about his life, says he should be over the fucking moon. He’s got a mortgage, and a nice truck, and a great job that he theoretically loves, a literal actual house in the suburbs with his best friend and beard, his student loans are fucking paid, and this is what he’s supposed to want. He has literally everything.

She’s pregnant.

That was the last promise.

Of course, that means he’s losing his fucking mind.

Because this is just what he does when he runs out of crises to resolve. When things get too easy and too good. It starts to feel fake, like his workshop and his house and his routine and even his friendship with Roxy and fucking _everything_ is made out of tissue paper, like it’ll tear if he moves too fast. Like it has for the last couple of months.

So he stops moving.

The clutter piles up, and the space becomes an aching reminder of his ineffectuality on so many fronts, and there’s nothing to do about it but stare at the wall and apparently smash a two hundred dollar piece of equipment because he’s an insomniac fuck.

He still hasn’t managed to get up from his chair.

By the time she gets home, he’s going to have to be over this. Over whatever the fuck has him so messed up, whatever he managed to ignore and avoid telling her about in the literal month they spent talking through this. He had his chance to tell her, and he didn’t, because he’s an actual moron. And now he’s made his bed and he has to lie in it, and there’s not an option not to.

There’s two fucking babies on the wholeass fucking way and he can’t do this to Roxy and he can’t do this to - he’s already done it to them, hasn’t he, he’s already… they’re going to be _part him_… how long has it been since he slept in a bed? How long will the ‘sorry Rox, big deadline, have to grind’ excuse keep her from worrying too much?

At long last, he lurches out of the seat, only to find himself confronted by the phone.

It’s not like he can call her back on the payphone, but he could… he knows Jake’s number by heart, he could…

He can’t.

He stoops to his knees and begins to sweep up the shards of glass. The smallest of them stick in his palm. He brushes the whole pile, as best he can, into an overfull waste bin and lopes out of the garage to wash his hands.

The main part of the house is impossibly tidy in a way that makes him feel out of place, still, even though he’s paying for half of it and is also personally the reason it’s so neurotically sterile-neat. Important to keep up appearances. There’s a spare room that’s currently housing a few dusty boxes of old shit that’d be better off donated to Goodwill anyway. It doesn’t _not_ make sense to do something with the space in their lives, right? He’s said exactly that so many goddamned times. He’s okay with this. Roxy wants to be a mom so fucking badly.

He scrubs glass shards from the meat of his hand and doesn’t think about any of that, or anything. It’s grey and cloudy outside, as it has been for weeks. Seasonal shit, probably. That could be it. At some point he’s going to have to cop to it being pretty much every season that gets him like this, but not today.

Today he stares out the window and watches the wind skim through the empty streets of the cul de sac as blood oozes from invisible cuts to his palm.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, as he zones out, someone else lapses back in to fill the growing space between his consciousness and reality.

_Just as well._

You’ve figured out which Dirk this is, and along with it, some really spicy new facts about whatever exists of your Self. The Self you’re carrying with you, at least.

This is fake Rose’s fake dad. The one you haphazardly merged with before, or at least, merged with the relevance of his static image to her dynamic one. To be perfectly forthright, which you suppose you might as well be, you still don’t really know how that worked, and it’s freshly upsetting now that you exist incrementally more than ‘not at all’, because there’s a chance, at least, that you can figure this out. Machines do the things that they do for a reason, and there’s nothing that can happen that you can’t unravel with enough critical inquiry and reverse-engineer, including the fucking universe and whatever dumbshit way you impulsively broke it.

Regardless of all that, apparently Rose had some accurate fucking assumptions about how pointlessly miserable the poor bastard was.

And if this is really him - and it is, you can feel it, how a part of him is actually, in truth, a fundamental part of you rather than some moronic auxiliary appendage like a fucking troll battery or a doctor or whatever the fuck, how he… how his personal miasma of defeat and his uncertainty and his fucking undiagnosed clinical depression are irreversibly part of your narrative now as then, because she wouldn’t have been able to crack that sociopathic effigy of a person you were so convincingly portraying without his help in breaking you down.

Because he’s enough like you to overlap with canon, somehow.

If this is really _him_, the fucker is about to kill himself. If not today, soon.

_Hold the fuck on a second._

He furrows his brow at the unwelcome line of thought, wipes blood from his hands, and forces himself to stop staring vacantly out the window like an idiot. He’s not about to do _anything_. He hasn’t fucking done anything without staring down the barrel of a deadline in literal fucking months. Chill.

Chill the fuck out.

_You will not chill the fuck out._

Okay, so he’s descending into psychosis. That’s new, at least.

_No, that’s the cardinal inverse of ‘new’. If it were an even remotely accurate assessment of the situation, the condition would be attributable to the same approximate part of your piece of shit brain responsible for the suicidal depression, asshole. Stop thinking so much, it’s making it hard to talk._

He opens his mouth, then closes it without saying anything. The gears in his head may take a while to wake up, but this is… surprising, at least, and he’s trying to process the addition of… intrusive thoughts? Intrusive voice? Is he fucking schizophrenic? No fucking way.

_Seriously. I’m trying to help you. Let me help you. Please._

How?

_I don’t fucking know. I don’t know. But I have to try. I have to. I have to, please, just let me help._

Blinking, he teeters slightly on his feet and turns to stabilize himself against the kitchen counter, gripped by a sudden sense of limbless vertigo.

When he looks up, a shimmering apparition sits casually on the dining room table.

“Sup,” you say, looking down and through yourself to the finished maple surface beneath the translucent outlines of your princely garb.

Unsettlingly, the tear down your chest where Kanaya grazed you with her chainsaw before you died the first time remains even in your incorporeal state.

This isn’t a body. You’re still bound to him, and expending a truly herculean amount of energy to continue to distinguish yourself from him in any way. Fading by the second. You exist only inasmuch as he exists. If anything that’s happening is a fucking hallucination, it’s this, but it’s entirely deliberate. You’re an overstimulated collection of synapses in a brain that belongs to him.

But you’re something.

He stares openly.

You stare back.

“What the fuck?” he says aloud, edging back, seemingly forgetting that his cut palm is slick with blood and losing his grip on the counter. “Am I flipping my shit?”

“You flipped your shit a long time ago,” you say shortly. “I’m here to un-flip it.”

“That doesn’t seem like something I’d do,” he mutters, glancing furtively between you and the door.

Panic spikes in the approximate aphysical location of your chest. You don’t exactly know what will happen if he makes a break for it, if there are rules, if you’ll be able to follow or even to continue to hang onto this dimensional presence outside of his line of sight.

“Take your time,” you say, aiming for ‘soothing’ with your tone, nearly wincing when he frowns.

“I’m not. I wasn’t. Before you - this… I had everything under control,” he insists, inching closer to the door. Shit.

“You clearly didn’t. And you still don’t.”

“What are you?”

“Great question, let’s start there. I’m somewhat you. From outside of your… fuck, the vocabulary restraints are really gonna kill me, here, aren’t they. I’m you. A version of you that’s made some mistakes. I want to unmake them.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” you say incredulously.

“This might as well be happening. Let’s hear it.”

You really didn’t expect it to be so easy, and you narrow your eyes, searching for the catch. He just stands there, though, looking moderately befuddled, dressed in your typical work clothes, a black tank top and extremely useful if not especially aesthetic cargo pants.

No explanation is immediately forthcoming.

Admittedly, you had expected to spend a lot more time and energy getting him to take you seriously.

Easy to forget that he’s you, and that you’ve never hesitated to lean into a weirdass fucking situation when the world presents it to you on a silver platter. Or more frequently, smashes it into your face like some kind of cream-pie pratfall, all innuendos intended.

“So you’re fucking sad,” you say. “Shit happens.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, shrugging. “Believe it or not, I get that.”

“Actually, though, do you? Do you get that?” you demand, feeling an incorporeal dam break in your chest. “Because you… because I… because we keep copping the fuck out! It gets hard. So what. So fucking what. Shit gets hard and we can’t handle it and we tap out, and we take something that’s fine, that could be amazing if we’d put literally any work into it, and we turn it into _shit_. For everyone. So fucking always. Endlessly. I can’t let you do it again. I’m on my knees, here, I’m begging you, since you’re the one who’s real, you’re the one who’s got an actual shot, just _try_ this time. You’re going to have the coolest fucking kids, you and Roxy, and you have to actually be there for them, make an _effort_, don’t… don’t hurt them like this before you even get the chance to meet them. You won’t deserve it for a fucking second, my man, but they’re going to love you so much.”

He raises an eyebrow. Pure fucking skepticism. Nice. Great response. You’re exhausted already from the effort it’s taken to get that off your chest, and he’s strikingly unmoved.

To be fair, it would have taken a fuck of a lot more than that to sway you even slightly, so you guess you should brace yourself for a fight. You’ll fight, fine. This is a battle worth fighting. For Rose, for Dave, for whatever versions of them exist here, real or not real, whatever.

“How do you know that?” he asks. “Seriously, look at yourself. If you’re really me. Look at what kind of person you are and tell me that’s true for a fucking second. Tell me… what, if you’re really trying to talk me out of knocking myself off, if that’s really what this is about… what fucking good do we do for our kids, hanging around to fucking ‘try’? What kind of father are we? What kind of anything are we? We’re aces in a crisis, dude, but in the everyday… our schtick gets real old, real fast. Ask Jake. Take your time. I can wait. I got nothing but fuckin’ time.”

It hurts. You can’t lie and say that he doesn’t know exactly how to push your buttons, isn’t playing you like a fiddle. You hold on to the certainty that you wouldn’t lash back this hard if something you were saying wasn’t ringing true. You’ve got him on the ropes.

You slip lightly from your perch on the table, standing to your mutual full height, approaching him as you would a spooked pony. Careful. Not like the fucker on the spaceship. You’re not like that omniscient asshat at all. You’re better now, you’re better than that, you’re going to _fix_ this. You’re going to fix him.

“Let me tell you about what you’re missing out on,” you say gently, solicitously. “Dave has the biggest fucking heart you can imagine. He’s good. Really, fundamentally good. Kid’s got talent. More than you ever did. Everything you love about Roxy, everything you can even slightly tolerate about yourself. You don’t want to meet him? You don’t want to meet that kid? They’re the best thing you’ve ever made. Him and Rose. God, she’s fucking - she’s so smart. She’s as smart as you think you are. She’s so much like you, it’s terrifying sometimes, but just… better. You’d love the shit out of them if you just gave yourself the chance. Don’t pussy out. Give it a chance. Give yourself a fucking chance to do this right.”

Somewhat surprisingly, he laughs. Sad, hollow, a sound that really ought to come at the tail end of a several-hour crying jag.

“This universe you’re talking about. These kids. It’s the one where I kill myself, isn’t it. You came from that one, or something.”

“In a sense,” you say cautiously.

“Ever see the version where I actually raise ‘em?”

You blink slowly behind your shades.

“That doesn’t matter,” you insist.

“That matters so fucking much! That’s the only thing that matters!” He rakes his hand through his untidy hair, laughing again, almost manically, now, still hopeless and empty and fucking _sad_ to the core, but strangely energized. Exactly the opposite of what you were going for. Well, shit. “Do you know what we do to people? The only thing we do? We _fix_ them. You’re fucking doing it to me right now. It’s all we know how to do. We have one fucking setting and dead zero capacity to modulate it. Roxy’s been enough of a shitshow of a person - yeah, that’s what we think of her, don’t act like you’re above it, she’s a trainwreck in motion - to tolerate it, because she needs us. But give us… give me a perfectly good kid, and I’ll fix it alright, I’ll fix it until it’s _me_. And maybe I _have_ thought about… y’know, maybe I do want to _cop out_. Can you blame me? Seriously, can you? Those kids sound great, dude. The best thing we could do for them is to write ourselves out of their story. I can admit it. Even if you can’t.”

You’re getting an awfully bad feeling about this. He stands up, back straight, defiant, even without his shades, even wan and haggard with lack of sleep.

“It’ll hurt Roxy,” you say quietly.

It sounds more like you’re trying to convince yourself than anything, and you wince.

“I’ve already done everything I can do for Roxy. She’ll be a great mom without me. The best fucking mom.”

“That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt her. And… Jane, and even Jake, seriously, he… doesn’t always know how to act like it, but he gives a shit about you. He cares a whole fuck of a lot, actually. I’ve seen it. Hell, _call him_, you thought about doing it, fucking _do it_, ask him for help, straight-up, don’t try to fucking nudge him into offering, just _ask_. He’ll never forgive himself. He won’t get over it. It’ll fuck him up forever.”

“Maybe I want it to fuck him up forever.”

“Stop it!” you snap. “Stop it, holy shit, I’m fucking trying, here. Why won’t you try?”

“It’s real sweet,” he says. “This hallucination or whatever. Weird enough to be something my shitty brain would come up with. Four out of five hats for mental breakdown verisimilitude. Makes a lot of sense.”

“Don’t -!”

You’re close enough to touch him, but you can’t. You’re not real. There’s no purchase for your rapidly-fading outline-of-hands to gain on his shoulders when you try, futilely, but you still try, even as you dissipate back into just-short-of-nothing.

“I’m trying to help you, for fuck’s sake!”

“Then you shouldn’t have worn my face to do it. The day I help my fucking self - I’m sure there’s some other shit that’ll happen first once hell freezes over, but it’ll be on the agenda. Better luck next time, Dirk of Christmas Yet To Come or whatever the fuck you’re supposed to be.”

While you open your mouth to respond, no words form. You don’t merely lose your minimal relative corporeality, you lose yourself completely in him once again.

And he’s alone in his kitchen. For a second, he waits, to see if the apparition will come back with a fresh salvo of ‘don’t kill yourself, dude’, but of course, it’s vanished into the ether. He sighs and pours himself a glass of water.

Self care and all that bullshit.

Sticking it in the half-empty dishwasher, he stretches and trudges back to his workshop-slash-garage, feeling the same in every way, but also strangely different. Electric with purpose. Certain. Decided. That’s nice, at least, feeling like there’s something he can do for a reason other than ‘he’ll literally get sued if he doesn’t deliver the promised product on the agreed-upon timetable’.

Back in his seat, for the hundred thousandth time, he considers the sturdy support beam that runs overhead, the pile of unused cables in the corner.

He makes a choice.

…

Well that went fucking great.

…

Fuck.

…

It’s not quite a dive bar. There’s a pool table in reasonably good repair, lines of freshly-washed glasses suspended overhead from a rack, and your daughter is seated next to you on a barstool, staring off at some point in the middle distance, in the direction of a long mirror situated across from you.

Both of you have reflections, difficult though it is to make them out in the low light, and you’re back in your torn godtier pajamas, which turns your stomach. You don’t linger on the reflection. She takes a moment to acknowledge your presence.

“It’s a nice idea. That you could simply try harder, and that would fix things,” she begins, stirring the ice in a glass of what looks like straight cranberry juice.

Probably is.

The purple neon lights overhead give the place, and her, an oddly gothic glow. A tumbler of bourbon sits untouched before you. You’re not sure how you know it’s bourbon, but it is, and you wish it was a double, and instantly, it’s that, too. When you go to pick it up, your hands are solid, the glass is cool and tangible, and you’re almost definitely you, sort of.

This scene doesn’t have the realness attribute of the cavalcade of scenarios you’ve been dragged through. It’s outside of any sort of textual reality. Its own narrative plane, governed by rules you don’t completely understand, because you aren’t writing them. Huh.

“A nice idea,” Rose continues, the corner of her mouth twitching up in a morose intimation of a smile. “But that isn’t what you need to learn.”

“Why not?” you ask stiffly, tipping back the glass. “Why the fuck not?”

“Can you honestly say that you weren’t trying, before? Forgive me, father, but your troubles have never been for lack of _effort_.”

“I’ll try better this time.”

“Work smarter, not harder. Someone ought to put that poster up in the workplace to increase morale. I imagine that it would serve the intended purpose quite efficiently. Leadership in action.”

You finish the drink and wait for another to appear. No such fuckin’ luck.

“There’s no catharsis in fixing something that isn’t broken,” she says.

“Something’s fucking broken.”

“Yes. But not that.”

“You planning on telling me what, then? Or are you enjoying this - whatever this is?”

She takes a leisurely sip of her cranberry juice.

“I don’t take any pleasure in your pain.”

“Great. Kill me.”

“Weren’t you past that?”

“The last Dirk made a really compelling case. I’m sold. Do it. Put me down like a fucking dog before I make anything worse. I’m not kidding.” The sinking feeling, the fear and pain and the golden haze and the uncertainty of the other-you on the ship, floods back in earnest. “Fuck, before I get some other unhinged version of myself in on the action. Isn’t once enough? Haven’t I _helped_ enough for one fucking lifetime?”

“Don’t trouble yourself with your alternate-universe duplicate,” she says gently. “I’m handling it.”

“What, you’re _handling it_ and you can’t take a second out of your packed God-schedule to do me a solid? Shit, just appearify me a bottle or two, I’ll do it myself,” you spit.

“You won’t. I can’t let you do that.”

“Why. The fuck. Not.”

“Because you can change. You already have.”

“Then why couldn’t I _stop him_,” you demand. “Why couldn’t I undo it? The fucker on the ship, the… your dad, him, every time I try to keep it from happening, it just fucking happens anyway. You told me to stop myself. I’m trying. You… can’t you fucking see that? I’m trying!”

“Precisely. You are trying. At every opportunity thus far, you have attempted to rewrite your narrative-of-self. You steer yourself towards these inflection points quite unconsciously. You have fought the same battle with yourself over and over again. I can see that you’re trying. But you won’t succeed. You can’t undo what’s been done. It’s already come to pass. You can’t avert what is already here - what has already been made true, what is already a part of your story.”

“Then what’s the fucking point?” you say stiffly, your face burning, your eyes cold and wet and - fuck. “Then it’s as meaningless as everything else. Then it’s just torture. It’s _torture_, Rose. I know I deserve it. I know I did everything I fucking could to deserve it. I know. But. If you ever… if I ever meant anything to you… if you still give a shit… please. I can’t take any more of this. I can’t. It’s too hard. It hurts too much. Please. I’m begging you. _Please_.”

You loll forward in the seat with the effort of that, and she catches you, easily, against her chest.

“It’s going to get worse,” she tells you, and you sob into her shirt. “And you’re going to get better.”

“I’m not,” you argue, muffled by fabric and tears. “I’m not. I can’t. I keep trying. I keep trying, and it doesn’t work.”

“Sh. It’s okay. Breathe,” she directs you, patting your back, an uncharacteristically comforting gesture. “It works out in the end.”

“How?” you choke. “If there’s no… fixing it, if I can’t…”

“You can’t stop what has already happened. No one can. I would undo it all if I could. But John is dead, and with him goes the capacity to retcon out our mistakes, once written, once read, if it was ever really something that could be done. The trick will have to be in understanding, in coming to terms with infinite universes of harm and suffering and pain - and all the rest, too - and seeing the cycle for what it is, and you for what you are. Just a person. A person who can change. Who _can_ do right by those he loves. Whose instantiations are limitless. _What has happened will happen._ What comes next is up to you.”

You almost laugh.

“How much Hope have you been shooting up?”

“Jake is right about a lot of things, when given the opportunity.”

Pressing your face against her, you muscle down a thousand responses to hearing his name. None of which are the right one. Instead, you calm your breathing, force your expression into something appropriate.

“Instead of trying to fix it, try to learn from it,” she says, breaking away from the hug, tipping up your chin with an index finger. “As I said, it will get worse.”

“I’m not sure I can take worse.”

“You can.”

“Did you See that?”

“No. I know you. And you’ve already chosen redemption. The bell can’t be un-rung. You _will_ suffer through it, because you don’t have the option not to.”

“Because you won’t kill me.”

“Because, Dirk, the true path is the one in which I don’t.”

You sigh, not petulantly, because you’re not a fucking child, you’re just _tired_. A full-body kind of exhausted, the kind that clings to your bones, permeates to your very metaphysical soul. Might be leftover from the last guy. Probably is. That’s how this seems to work.

“Fine.”

Rather than leaning on her again, you slump forward against the bar, waiting for her to send you spiraling back into the hell you left behind, or else the worse one that she promises is yet to come. How much worse can it get? Worse than what you did to Jake? Worse than seeing yourself fight through it, ask for help twice in the same words, receive it in one universe, be denied it in another?

Knowing there was really nothing you could have done. Nothing that would have definitively prevented it. Never any chance to save yourself. Never anyone who could have saved you. No lesson to it.

What could be worse than flaying off the superficial layer of significance, what little you thought you might be able to salvage, the last hope you had left to you, that your suffering might _mean_ something, and finding nothing? Nothing, nothing, nothing. Meaninglessness all the way down.

You couldn’t have helped Rose’s father. You can’t help yourself. No matter who you become, they’ll still be at the core of you, immutable, absolute. Your narrative journey doesn’t mean jack shit. You should have figured that out sooner.

“That’s not what I was going for, exactly,” she sighs, and you feel her hand return to your shoulder, try not to lean into it like the touch-starved piece of shit you are, but how long will it be until someone touches you again, really _you_, not some body you’re barely inhabiting?

(Time doesn’t exist.)

(Too long.)

“It means a lot to me,” she says softly. “I wouldn’t lie to you about something like that.”

“It shouldn’t,” you retort.

“‘Should’ and ‘should not’ have never stopped either of us before.”

“I wish they had.”

“That much can’t be rewritten without compromising the truth. There is no narratively consistent universe in which either of us is not very much in competition for the title of ‘most stubborn motherfucker alive’. Any iteration of us even marginally less obstinate than our alpha selves will inevitably go untouched by the Light.”

You laugh abruptly, without really meaning to, because she’s right. The bourbon is catching up with you.

“I _am_ sorry,” she says, pausing midway through the slow, comforting pattern of gentle pats she’s been delivering to your shoulder, not that your heart siezes in your chest at the thought of her withdrawing her hand or anything, because it doesn’t. “I want to bring you home. I want to show you the world we’re making. It’s for you as much as it’s for any of us. For what I believe of you, at any rate, which is all of you I carry with me. I wish you could see it.”

The thought makes your stomach lurch.

“I can’t.”

“I know. I only said that I wish you could. We both have things that we wish, but can’t have. For all that you desire to be compelled, and for all that I desire to compel you, neither of us can ultimately give the other what we want. I think that’s fairly poetic of us.”

“Sweet fuck, we are a couple of pretentious bitches.”

“Yes, we are.”

She makes as if to stand up from her stool, and you jolt up from the bar, stretching out a hand to stop her before she can leave you again. You’ll regret it if you don’t, you tell yourself.

(You’ll be alone again when you wake up.)

“Can you tell me anything else about this - about wherever I am? You sent me here, right? When I…”

“You’ve always been here, in a way,” she says, with characteristic unhelpfulness. “I partitioned your awareness outside of canonical constraint, that something of your self would remain when your Self was dissolved.”

“But you’re guiding me through it.”

“No. Everything that can be, is. Everything that you truthfully are, conditionally or otherwise, has been or will be written. Each microcosmic component of this extranarrative space is a manifestation of some truth of you. In each mirror, you will find a shadow of yourself, as has been written, as has been read, as has been interpreted or imagined. Where you wake up is where some part of you believes you need to be.”

She hesitates, for a second, and you lean in.

“You’re guiding me,” you repeat.

“I’m _trying not to_,” she sighs. “I understand the consequences of my meddling too extensively. Our respective interests simply don’t align with what you fundamentally need, which is to change. But I’ve already forgiven you. I would forgive you with your hand on my throat. Before my head hit the floor. Fortunately for the universe, for me, and ultimately for you, there are a great many other people I love, and I make a habit of marrying only women who are significantly smarter than me and capable of pointing out my prodigious pseudoedipal blind spot when necessary.”

You snort. She smiles sadly.

“I love you very much, and because I love you, I have to leave you to this work without my interference.”

“What do you mean, when you say it works out in the end?” you ask.

“Any ending at all is conditional to the achievement of a state that could be described as ‘it working out’. Specifically, when you can forgive yourself.”

“So I’m never getting out of here, is what you’re saying.” You rake a hand through your hair, clench your fist at the nape of your neck, breathe through the gentle burn of it. “Great.”

“There _will_ come a day when you can forgive yourself, Dirk, for having the countenance and the name and the memories of a man that no longer exists. You will be able to face the worst of what you could be, the worst of what you were, knowing that it isn’t what you are. If I didn’t believe that, I would have left you to your heroic death.”

Involuntarily, you feel your fist go slack.

“It was heroic?”

There’s no hint of deception in her expression, not that there would be, not that she isn’t writing the fabric of reality into existence around you. But you watch, regardless, waiting for her answer.

“It was.”

She makes another gesture towards standing, but stops herself, this time.

“It _will_ get worse,” she echoes, frowning, “but it doesn’t have to do so immediately. Close your eyes.”

Wordlessly, you comply.

She takes your hand.

The world falls away.

…

It’s been roughly three minutes since Rose and Kanaya disappeared into a satiny white tent to share their first meal together. Despite the robot butlers milling about with hors d'oeuvres and the abundant distractions of the venue, he’s having a hard time not feeling out of place. It hasn’t been long enough since the game, since the time before the game, to be completely comfortable with an abundance of food and an even more jarring abundance of people.

He hates to admit it, but he’s still more comfortable alone, half the time. Jake is great - god, Jake is the best, but he gets antsy in the workshop, flits around like a mayfly in vyvanse withdrawal, and he’s taken to shooing him out once he starts snapchatting the Very Important Work that Dirk is constantly performing. Especially after Rose texted him one afternoon to critique his fucking welding methods.

Welding is a punishment for unruly robots. She’d know that if she paid attention when she visited his robot-jail-slash-garage instead of quipping so goddamned constantly.

He’s really happy for her, what with the marriage thing and all. It was a sweet ceremony. He and Roxy got to walk her down the aisle arm-in-arm and everything, Dave was definitely crying behind his shades, Kanaya seems decent, for a troll, and if she makes Rose happy, that’s good enough for him. And Rose is happy. Radiantly happy.

“Have you seen Jane around?” Jake asks, sidling up with a plate of crudité and dip. “I haven’t bumped into her since the ceremony, and I did think we all had some television-type business to discuss, didn’t we?”

“Dude, it’s a wedding, let’s forget about my crackpot schemes for twenty goddamned seconds and eat some carrot sticks.”

“Quite unlike you to even momentarily disregard your favorite pastime, but I can’t say I mind the reprieve from shenanigans,” he laughs, reaching over to straighten Dirk’s tie with a frown. “My friend, please don’t take this the wrong way, but this tie. How did I not - what in the blazes were you thinking when you knotted it? Is this… is this a clove hitch, Dirk?”

“No,” he says, which is at least somewhat true, since he doesn’t know what a clove hitch is. Naming knots is an idiotic and confusing practice and should be illegal.

Jake tuts paternally and sets about untying the offending garment, gasping in open horror when he discovers that Dirk has tucked the loose tail into the waist of his grey slacks.

“Great scott, it’s a good job Kanaya didn’t catch more than a glimpse of your garb what with all the gazing at her bride-to-be, she’d have had a right conniption if she’d caught sight of this travesty!”

“My suit is _great_, and this knot is easy to untie if the end gets stuck in the gears of something,” he insists, crossing his arms as Jake gives up, removes the entire tie with a zip of silk on cotton, and starts afresh, leaning in closer to do so. “I’d rather leave my messy decapitations to my children. Besides, Rose said I looked fine this morning.”

Jane must have bought him this cologne, one for special occasions, since he doesn’t immediately register it as familiar. It practically smells like money. He has to force himself not to lean in too obviously, to breathe like a normal human being. Jake doesn’t seem to notice, but then again, he never does. Just grins and glows softly with the vicarious joy of the wedding, even in the late afternoon sunlight, and fusses with his collar and whatever the fuck a ‘proper full windsor’ is.

“I never said you didn’t look utterly dashing, my good man,” Jake says, once he’s finished and removed his hands from Dirk’s neck, his thumb lingering for a second on the gnarled purple scar that circles his throat like a necklace. “Hell, at a lovely outdoor wedding such as this one, I’d almost say that the tie is gilding the lily, as it were! One must take care not to upstage the brides at their wedding, Dirk. Basic etiquette, that.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Real genuine concern, there.”

“As I was saying, I worry about Janey, all by her lonesome in the human kingdom,” Jake continues blithely, throwing an arm over Dirk’s shoulders with the cavalier sincerity of a man who is absolutely not paying attention to the way his conversational partner’s breath hitches in his chest. “If you run across her, do let me know, there’s a good chap, eh? We really must stick together, we’ve nothing if we don’t have each other!”

“Tell you what. I’ll track her down before we’re seated for dinner. Shuffle the placards if you have to, we’re all sitting together.”

“I like your style!”

Nearly upending his plate of raw vegetables, Jake leans in to kiss his boyfriend, just a peck to the side of the jaw, though Dirk goes pink to his eartips regardless.

They’ve been _together_-together for months, and he’s still fuckin’ like this. It’s actually inhumane, what Jake does to him. He clears his throat, straightens his own tie, turns to meet him as he draws away, kisses him back. It’s really not fair.

“Alright, I promised Roxy a dance, and it looks like she and Dave are almost done,” he says, grinning and eating a slice of celery from his plate. “Bluh, I told myself I was going to eat some vegetables before we all got sloshed, but it seems my eyes were bigger than my stomach. Here, I bequeath it to you. Steward it wisely. Remember, we simply must have a moment with Jane! It’s a mission of vital import!”

“Roger that,” Dirk sighs.

“There’s a good man!” Jake says, patting his cheek, pressing the unwanted plate into his hands, and disappearing into the crowd of Rose and Kanaya’s acquaintances swirling around the dance floor.

He’s alone again, and he allows himself a far more self indulgent sigh, then eats a carrot stick, glancing around to see if he can’t get a bead on Jane without subjecting himself to any involuntary conversations with people he doesn’t know.

Dave and Roxy are absolutely, as Jake would say, cutting a rug on the dance floor, though neither of them can dance. That’s never stopped his family, and particularly not Roxy, who has an unearthly talent for getting people with their heads up their asses to loosen up. Dave twirls her a few too many times, then catches her in an awkward dip as she stumbles dizzily in time with the song’s conclusion, both of them in paroxysms of laughter.

Good for them.

Jane is nowhere in sight, and he finds a robot waiter and passes the plate on so he’ll have his hands free. He gets nervous when he doesn’t have full range of motion, even though this is probably the safest place on a paradise planet that’s already ridiculously safe. He designed these robots. At the first sign of trouble, their prerogative is to protect Rose and her wife. Secondary assignment: don’t kill wedding guests in the process. It’s unnecessary, and Rose made sure to let him know that she thought so, but it’s… it makes him feel a bit better about things.

He acknowledges that he’s being ridiculous, sort of, but it’s hard to stop.

Glancing once again at the beautiful silk tent, which ripples slightly in the breeze, he turns away from the main body of the party, trying to get himself into Jane’s hypothetical mindset. She typically does better than he does at these sorts of events, since she can mingle with the best of them, and also isn’t an antisocial piece of shit, but anyone could get overwhelmed with the energy of the afternoon, and Jane isn’t made of steel.

The wedding is being held at and behind the Mayoral Estate, which was once the home of a close Carapician friend of Dave and Rose’s, long dead but memorialized in a public mansion, museum, and sprawling rose garden, each color morph named after a different canned good, based on the shade.

He passes rows of vibrantly hued blossoms, hedges, gazebos, all of which is typically open to anyone’s perusal, but has been briefly closed down for the godwedding of the millennium. It’s quiet, but too open for his liking, his lines of sight obscured without really sheltering him from anything they might conceal. It makes the palms of his hands itch.

Despite that, he meanders along, forcing himself to move at a normal pace, as though he’s wandering through the gardens for his own enjoyment rather than slowly going out of his mind with environmental paranoia, until he comes upon a pink granite fountain. The statue at the center shows the Mayor himself, with jets of water shooting from an armful of carved stone approximations of cans.

Jane is staring up at it, almost wistfully, a glass of scotch in her hand. He exhales in relief.

“Hey.”

“Oh, hello. I didn’t expect to see anyone out here, but I… well, I can’t imagine that sort of gathering is an easy thing for you to endure.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve endured worse than the happiest day of my beloved ectodaughter’s life. Missed you on the dance floor, though.”

“I don’t mean to be a trouble.”

“You’re not a trouble. How long have you been out here?”

She glances down at her glass, which is nearly empty.

“A while.”

“Could you _endure_ some company, d’you think?”

“I’ve endured worse,” she says, smiling slightly and gesturing him over with the hand not holding her alcohol. She finishes the glass and sets it down on the ledge that surrounds the fountain. “Distract me from my thoughts, Strider.”

“That’d be a crime. They’re typically such good thoughts.”

“I don’t know.” She looks back at the statue of the Mayor. “I really don’t know.”

“C’mon, you know a lot of things.”

“Well…” She hesitates. He pretends to be interested in the statue as well, stepping back slightly to allow her more room to think. “Perhaps I’ve been thinking about… certain kinds of disconnects. This fellow, I mean, this Mayor. He is remembered as a great leader of men, a builder, a humanitarian.”

“Seems like he was a pretty chill dude.”

“More than that. He meant a great deal to a lot of people.”

“I never met the guy, really, but yeah, that’s the vibe, more or less.”

“How will we be remembered, Dirk?”

“Is that a general question? We, as in, the kids Skaia spat out with godpowers? You and me? The human race?”

“Oh, you know. I suppose I mean… me.”

“You’re allowed to say ‘I’. The self is a perfectly acceptable subject for a good monologue. I’m always game to hear it, y’know.”

She turns to scrutinize him, frowning, as though she expects him to be making some kind of joke. He isn’t joking. It’s not his way.

Her mouth twitches slightly, on the precipice of speech.

“Here,” he says, taking off his jacket with a sweeping gesture, setting it on the fountain-damp pink stone, so she won’t damage her dress, a beautiful blue silk gown that flutters around her calves. “Sit with me.”

“Thank you,” she says, settling down beside him, leaning slightly on his shoulder, seemingly not conscious of just how close together they are.

“Tell me what’s up, Jane. I want to hear about you.”

“Sometimes I think you’re the only one who does,” she says wryly.

He doesn’t interrupt, just puts a hand on her shoulder and waits for her to go on.

“I think I might be losing my mind, all cooped up with my work. It’s good work. People need to eat, you know, and there’s nothing better than applying myself to that, considering all the ways we can use the brilliant technology we brought with us to this world to keep everyone fed as enjoyably as possible! Human culinary tradition… I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, centuries away from… other humans, but it’s worth preserving.”

“It’s not worth grinding yourself to death over, Jane. Nothing is.”

“You’re one to talk,” she laughs.

He smiles, just slightly.

“Maybe so. Doesn’t make me wrong, though.”

“I… yes, you’re right. I just wonder if that’s truly why I’ve occupied myself so completely with my work, or if that’s just a virtuous posture I’ve adopted, to justify… I want to be my own woman. I want to deserve the empire I’ve inherited. But how can I, knowing that the mortar to hold it all together has been mixed with blood from the beginning? I still want to see it flourish by my hand. I want it to be… morally okay, to want that.”

“You want a moral arbiter? Shit, Jane, look at me. Look me in the eye. You’re not doing anything wrong. Christ, you’re feeding people. I can’t think of anyone who deserves to be a fucking too-many-dollars-for-an-illion-suffix-ionaire more than you do. Frankly, the only other one I know is my brotherson, and I can’t get a straight answer from him as to how he accumulated that much wealth without violating his… shockingly collectivist principles. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yeah, it is. Fuck anyone who says different. You’re good. You’re fucking _great_.”

“Again, I don’t know if I can reasonably extrapolate from your perspective to… literally anyone else’s. And it does matter to me, what they think of me. That my… son-grandson flinches at my surname, it _matters_. He was the true leader of his session, and they… your children, they have more affection for a millennia-dead Carapician than for me, which is an insane thing to think about, I know I sound _insane_, but I just… Roxy has been busy with Calliope, and I feel guilty enough about venting to her already, and heavens, all I ever seem to do with you is talk about my problems!”

“I don’t mind. I love you.”

She sniffs slightly.

“Thank you, Dirk.”

He rubs her back through her dress.

“It’s terribly rude of me, I really do this _every_ time, I’m sorry. You… when last we spoke, you were talking about a television show, you and Jake. Can I help with that? Just say the word.”

Opening his mouth to respond, he closes it, as something strange happens to his… thought process. He was definitely going to say ‘yes’. That was ultimately where he was going with this. He loves Jane. The best way to keep her close, to fix this… whatever this is, is invariably to involve her in what Jake has a thousand synonyms to describe: his zany plots, his intricate contrivances, his unfathomably brilliant propositions. The sort of things that keep him from going off the deep end, when he lets them.

But _you remember this_.

Not quite like this. It wasn’t exactly… you don’t think this is what it was, though admittedly, in the aftermath of omniscience, plucking memories from a single timeline is treacherously difficult. But this was essentially how you were. You’ve had… not this conversation with Jane, but one much like this. Or maybe that’s not how it went at all.

You do and don’t want to remember how it really was.

He registers this development, the voice rising in the back of his mind, with minimal surprise. It isn’t usually like this, his moments of extranarrative awareness, but he’s learned to steel himself and let them happen. The first time one broke through, he hit the ground with a sound like a ziplock bag of marinating steaks and scared the hell out of Jake. So he doesn’t do that anymore. He deals with it.

“Huh,” he says quietly, leaning metaphysically into the otherness of it. Curiosity is always getting the better of him, here as much as anywhere.

You surface fully. With his willing cooperation.

_Weird._ But you get it. It’s where you were, too, more or less.

“Dirk?” Jane asks, confused by your protracted silence in response to her question.

“No,” you say. “I don’t think… actually, you know what? Jake and I usually do takeout on Saturday. You want to come over for that? Let’s get Roxy in on it. Just the four of us, like old times. No shop talk. You’re right. We need to just hang out more. All of us do.”

“Oh, you’re not ditching the show, are you?” she asks, her concern undisguised in her tone. You don’t make a habit of giving up on your convoluted enterprises, once you’ve voiced them aloud.

“Maybe,” you tell her. “Let’s… go back to the party. I had Jake save you a seat.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he was asking after you. I thought I’d probably have to pry you away from a social engagement, but I didn’t figure it’d be with someone as important as the Mayor of Cantown.”

You gesture up at the statue emphatically, and she laughs.

“What’s gotten into you, Dirk?”

“My kid’s getting married, let me be weird and nostalgic. I’ve missed you, dude. We really… we should hang out more. Normal-wise. We’re fuckin’ eighteen, no reason to live in our respective offices like a bunch of actual adults just because we’re the elder gods of the planet we created, right?”

“Uh, right?” she agrees, grinning, but still confused.

“C’mon. Up you go. It’s a beautiful dress. You’ve got to let me inflict at least one dance on you before Dave gets ahold of the music.”

She laughs again, even more gaily than before, despite her apparent surprise at this turn of events, finding her feet in admirably sensible low heels and keeping pace with you as you twirl your slightly sodden jacket off the fountain ledge and over your shoulders like a cape, setting off in the direction of the distant music.

You feel this body react to the weirdly open-but-not-open space, but all you see is Jane. You don’t know if you can fix… if there’s any fixing the damage, there, because it’s real, and it’s not all yours to fix. But you can have this evening. You can do this for her, and for you, too.

This is Rose’s gift. An inflection point that matters, or would, if any of this did.

Does it matter? It isn’t real, but her hand in yours _feels_ as real as anything.

And you dance with her, and she’s actually ridiculously competent, as partners go, and Roxy sweeps her up when you’re done, and the newlyweds emerge, to everyone’s delight, and take a turn sitting at every table. Rose smiles at you, compliments your tie and your capejacket, gives you the most normal hug she’s ever capably executed in your vicinity, and… that’s it. It’s just Rose. You love Rose. And she’s happy, here.

The night ends with fireworks, huddling on a grassy slope in the chill of the evening with Jake and Jane and Roxy and Calliope - but not _that_ Calliope - and laying out in the grass, full and a little tipsy and content. Jake is stroking your hair, supporting most of your weight on his chest, Jane is tucked under your arm, using you as a lawn pillow, and Roxy is laying across everyone’s laps with - fine, you’ll say it - _Callie_ in her arms.

And you think, maybe it could have been like this.

How hard would it have been to make it like this?

But the realization that you could have had this existence, its proximity to what you truly do remember, doesn’t cut to the bone like before. And when it ends, you’re ready. You’re ready for it to get worse. And you want… you really, _really_ want to get better.


	3. Farewell Vriscourse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter longer than both other chapters put together? It's more likely than you think.
> 
> Straightforward content warning this time for explicit canon-typical child abuse. It's tagged, but seriously, this chapter might get heavy if that's a thing that's going to be hard for you. Also, an 'I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream' parody and most of what that entails. Some body horror, also tagged. You can ctrl-f for the next _four_ ellipses (....) to skip a section, and in general, my philosophy is heavily 'read to your comfort level'!

This is easily the worst situation he can imagine.

His setmate has fucking disappeared into the crowd of drunken co-eds swarming the stage as the next act comes on. It’s a scrawny guy in nondescript clothes, practically shaking with nervous energy. Amateur hour, though the beats piped onstage at his gesture are solid as hell. Dirk takes him for some kind of mumblerap artist, the sort that doesn’t need much lyricism or charisma to draw crowds. Just danceable energy and a few memeable phrases.

Not that he’s some kind of fucking snob, any good track takes time and skill, but he’s already so over _everything_ about this poorly-defined ‘tour’, and also everything else about his current situation. Some kind of warehouse converted into a performance space and speakeasy, conveniently juxtaposed with the University of Florida’s sprawling campus and abundance of fun-seeking co-eds, even on a Thursday night.

Sweet fuck, he’s so tired. He feels about twice his age. Everyone in the crowd looks way too young to be drinking, or out past nine, but he envies them their inebriation.

No drinks for him just yet. There’s a killer drive in front of them if they want to get from Gainesville to South of the Border in any reasonable amount of time. _He_ has a killer drive, at least, since it’s not clear whether his setmate has ever put his hands on a steering wheel in his life, or would know what to do with one if he did. Not like he’d trust the dude with anything more complicated than _maybe_ a matchbox car.

They’ve been on together for the last week, up and down Florida’s east and west coast, following gigs and a frankly insane schedule that he’s gotten used to by now, with Cal running the show. There are two things he’s never seen Gamzee Makara do: wash off his unbelievably shitty greasepaint, and sober up.

So no thanks to letting this dude do anything more than dick with the music and nap in the passenger seat. _He’s_ got something to go home to, once all of this shit is done. Frankly, he can’t imagine anyone misses his idiot setmate for a second. Cal’s basically doing a public service by keeping the guy from settling into any one place for too long.

When he finally tracks him down in a sea of sweaty bodies, it’s predictably at the bar, a drink in one hand and a blunt in the other, no fucking accounting for how he managed to get ahold of either of them. Mid-debauchery, as per the usual, in the most repellent way possible. It’s barely been a week, and he is so, so, _so_ done with this shit.

“Come on,” he says shortly, seizing his setmate by a boney upper arm and twisting it behind his back, all the better to steer him away from a partially undressed young woman giggling supine on the bar with a belly button full of tequila. “We’re fucking leaving.”

This seems to wake him up, at least, his eyes black-paint-crusted and heavy-lidded, but focusing on him, now, as Dirk slaps a twenty down for the bartender to cover the tab, in case they have any delusions about being allowed to perform here again.

“I dig, brother, no need to be grabbing nobody all rough-like,” he says blearily, tugging against Dirk’s grip with a boneless lack of conviction.

“Just get in the fucking car before one of these idiots grows a sense of self respect and pulls a piece on you or something, it’s fucking Florida, asshole.”

“None too likely, my ninja, my homegirl Leah… Lisa… fuck, we were really hittin’ it off.”

“I’m not your anything.”

“Aw, Dirkmeister, don’t be like that -” Gamzee starts to say, and he sighs almost loud enough to be heard over the music.

The dude onstage, in defiance of his expectations, is pretty much going nuts, spitting too fast for him to follow. He pauses in the middle of the crowd to listen, the bodies parting around them, an island in a sea of movement and noise.

“My dude Tavros is motherfuckin slaughtering those rhymes, huh?”

“He’s good,” Dirk concedes, not relaxing his grip on Gamzee’s grimey t-shirt sleeve by so much as a fraction of a unit of force.

“You sure we can’t all up and stick around ‘till after he’s done, go by and congratulate a brother?”

“Bro. Gamzee. Whatever the fuck. We need to be in South Carolina motherfucking _yesterday_. Do you _dig_?”

He blinks sleepily up at Dirk, despite the fact that he’s a good half a head taller than him. His posture is just that fucking insanely shitty. It’s almost as obnoxious as everything else about him.

“I dig, I dig.”

“Good. Pull your shit together and don’t make me drag you out of here.”

He has two missed calls from Cal by the time they navigate their way to the exit. This place is a fire hazard made manifest, a catastrophe in the making, hot lights and alcohol just waiting to be combined into a building-scale molotov cocktail. Climbing into his truck, starting the engine before Gamzee’s even managed to find the shotgun door, he dials back.

No response. Straight to voicemail.

“Hey. You’ve reached Caliborn’s office. If you have something important to say. Leave a message. If you don’t. Fuck you for wasting my time.”

“Yo, Cal, just got out of… Homeroom? This shitty venue, whatever the fuck it’s called. On the way to South of the Border. Missed your calls, but if you’ve got any news on where we’re staying, maybe call me back, asshole? Thanks. Fuck you. Gamzee also says ‘fuck you’. Bye.”

“I don’t say motherfuckin nothing of the sort,” Gamzee slurs, his face against your window leaving a Gamzee-shaped face print as he struggles with his seatbelt.

“You should. Cal’s a piece of shit. He should be made aware of that at every possible opportunity.”

“My homie Cal ain’t any kind of bad dude, Dirkster,” he argues, looking vaguely hurt.

“He fucking shot a guy on his label, _bro_. If I had any other fucking options, I wouldn’t be associating with him for any reason but a swift and well-deserved asskicking.”

Gamzee makes a kind of weird, nasal noise, and Dirk wonders for a second if he’s finally choking to death on his own tongue as karmic punishment for making his life a living hell, but it turns out he’s… laughing? Christ.

He’s not new to the scene, or to working with Cal, but he’s managed to stave off most of the abuse he’s heard about from other artists who’ve worked with the dude by actively antagonizing him before the asshole gets the chance to hit first. Keeping him on the defensive. Cal respects that, at least, and up until this fucking tour, he’d thought they had some sort of understanding.

Clearly not, since he’s stuck shepherding a literal clown on a tour of fucking canker sores on the dick of the United States, which is to say, Florida and its bar scene. Motherfucker.

The stories he’s heard, though, are pretty fucking bad. There’s a reason the dude has an all-male lineup - he can’t keep a woman on the roster for shit. Not even sketchy stuff, just heaps of fucking open-misogyny bullshit. Incredible. Just incredible, how life in the fast-paced and blindingly exciting music industry has introduced him to such a bunch of fucking _gems_ of human beings.

“It’s cool, my homie-D,” Gamzee says, slow to respond, but still smiling dreamily, cheek smooshed against the window, eyes lit up by the neon sign advertising the establishment that they still haven’t entirely managed to leave. “No worries. Me ‘n Cal, we talked it the whole motherfuckin way out, now it’s all just fuckin chill vibes.”

He pulls up his shirt - whoa, fuck, Dirk nearly swerves into a parked motorcycle on his way out of the lot in surprise, not having anticipated a strip show - to reveal not just one, but a neat _set_ of what are _definitely_ fucking bullet scars. Fuck!

There’s no immediate response to that, other than _what the fuck_, and he’s pretty sure that’s _implied_, so he leans in and flicks on the radio and ignores the guy lounging two feet away from him, like he’s been trying to do for the last week.

Gamzee is fucking inscrutible, not least because of the twenty-four-fucking-seven sideshow act he’s got going on with the gruesome black and white stage makeup. At least, he’d been hoping that this tour, if it can be called that, would give him the opportunity to learn something about the man who’d made himself from a small name to a small legend through twenty-second lyrical rap videos in clownface on TikTok outside of the mien that he presents to the public.

Be careful what you wish for, huh.

He still hasn’t seen the fucker wash it off, even, since they met up in the studio parking lot in Miami. Purely based on the lack of cleansing going on, he can’t imagine it’s a pretty sight beneath the shit. He’s not ready to think about any more hidden depths or whatever the fuck. He’s just _not_. Those fucking scars, though, stark and white on sallow skin. Old, but not that old.

Gamzee leans in languidly and turns the radio up. Thank fuck. Too loud to hear himself think, just focusing on the road and the kind of contemplations that don’t need words.

Half the reason he’s so pissed off about the whole situation is that he’d planned to Facetime with Dave once they made South of the Border, and that’s looking increasingly unlikely as a viable prospect. It’s a school night, and even with the hour time difference with Houston, it’ll be too late by the time they make it. He doesn’t want to think about Dave being up that late, either, without anyone around to turn the modem off and force him off the internet. He’s a hypocrite, but someone’s gotta do it. Put their foot down and be some kind of authority figure.

Hard to pull that off when his personal and professional lives are such utter shitshows. But he tries, for Dave, he’s really trying. It just doesn’t always translate right. Sometimes it seems like the best thing he can do for the kid is to give him space, but it’s agony to spend so much time on the road, knowing that Dave’s always needed people so much more than he has. He can take this sort of life.

If he can just keep his idiot brother in school through graduation, it won’t have to be like this for him. He’ll have options. He’s a fucking brilliant little dude. Big… dude? Sixteen year old dude. Christ. Christ on a motherfucking cross, he’s getting so old.

They drive in silence, and he thinks about upcoming birthday gifts and whether or not it will snow this year. Does the math in his head, how much he’s making from the tour, how much his cut of streaming sales will change assuming a fairly consistent rate of increased exposure through association with Gamzee and the accompanying weird but devoted fanbase. Cal’s a piece of shit, but he’s not stupid. This’ll help them both.

He thinks about the scars, and frowns, shaking his head as though that’ll do a damned thing to clear it.

They make it out of Florida on I-75. The billboards get taller and brighter and more ominous. God gave his only son for you. Have you accepted Jesus into your heart?

He hasn’t accepted jack-fucking-shit into his heart, or anywhere else, in months, and the sheer thought almost makes him snort, which is about as much as he ever laughs. Gamzee looks up slowly, blinks, and goes back to gazing up at the billboards, bobbing his head sporadically along with the top-50 hits that’ve been on repeat for the last few days.

“What’d you do that got Cal heated enough to fuck you up like that?” he asks, then nearly swears under his breath.

Fine, he wasn’t doing a great job of not thinking about it.

Gamzee blinks owlishly as he turns down the music.

“It was a long time ago, vitamin D.”

“There’s no way you don’t remember how shit like that went down,” he says incredulously.

“Well, it’s not so much that I can rightly be saying I don’t, if you feel me on that, but I can’t help but be all up and thinking that it doesn’t really motherfuckin matter too much. Not like I went and kicked it or anything that-ways. A couple of months laid up isn’t nothing to motherfuckin eternity.”

He scoffs.

“We don’t have eternity, dude.”

“Don’t tell me you’re all up and into the temporal heresies, my brother. Look, maybe you believe that shit, about death and all that motherfuckin nonsense, but I can’t get behind any part of it. What’s one more hole, long as I’m not hurting nobody? If anything’s something, then nothing’s nothing, and I can’t… some things just gotta be nothing. Can’t rightly not be nothing.”

“Uh, sure. It’s your call, obviously,” he sighs, grimacing internally for ever having thought this sort of conversation would go anywhere constructive. “I can shut the fuck up about it.”

Gamzee smiles vacantly, digging around in his cartoonishly large boot for a flask.

“Want some?”

“I’m driving, asshole.”

“Figured I might as well offer. Since we’ve got this existence thing going, all mutual-like, in this bitch called reality. For now. Might as well.”

“For now,” Dirk sighs, eyeing the clock on the dashboard. Past midnight, well past eleven back in Houston. If he speeds, if it only takes another two hours, he can justify calling Dave and apologizing for the lack of Facetime, at least. Dave can pretend to be sleeping, he can pretend to be in control of his life. He doesn’t want his little bro to worry.

“Huh,” Gamzee says, knocking back the flask, shoving it into his shirt. “Had you pegged different-like, bro.”

“Do I look like the kind of guy who’s just itching to flip the truck and bite it in the middle of the night on a shitty highway in assfuck -” he pauses and checks the GPS “-_Georgia_? Fucking Georgia? I don’t die in Georgia, dude. That’s not how this works.”

Gamzee laughs again, a noise like two cheese graters passionately macking in the passenger seat.

“Your call, my ninja. Shit, I’m not hardly planning on up and making it for you.”

He turns the music back up, glancing uncomfortably over at the clown, who already seems to have forgotten having said anything out of the ordinary. Is there even an ordinary with Gamzee? He never anticipated establishing one, so the lack isn’t exactly a disappointment.

They stop at a near-empty gas station, two hours later. He shuffles around at the pump, nervous and without anyone to watch him, since Gamzee is inside, picking out a soda and hopefully not getting shot (again) or arrested (also presumably again, though he admittedly doesn’t have any evidence for that).

“Pick up, pick up,” he mutters to himself.

It takes a while. Thursday night. Dave stays late for a stupid community service club on Thursday evenings. He hates it, but it’s all part of the resume-padding game before college. They don’t really do much of anything, but he gets a semi-weekly story or two out of the endeavor.

After an ungodly number of rings, Dave picks up, looking sheepish and tired. A whole lot like someone who’s been staying up to the asscrack of the next morning instant messaging with his online friends, all of whom Dirk is fairly certain are old men living in their mothers’ basements, catfishing the shit out of his innocent brother in the hopes of selling his organs on the black market. Or worse, getting him _involved in internet culture_.

“Hey, bro,” Dave says, with an unconvincing attempt at a ‘totally just woke up’ voice.

He sighs, try as he might to stifle it. (He doesn’t actually try very hard.)

“Sup,” he replies. “We’re closing in on the South Carolina border. Thinking of you.”

“Aw, say hi to the barbecue sauce and the legacy of plantation slavery for me.”

“Good lord, someone’s going to deck you one of these days.”

“You love it.”

“I love you. Not it.”

“Lame. How’d the gig go? How’s the clown?” Dave asks, his screen representation turning shaky and pixellated as he exits his room and heads out to the kitchen briefly, the sound of the faucet running and a glass being filled blurring into his tinny voice.

“Gig was fine. I’m honestly just glad to be out of Florida. The clown remains inscrutable. Day seven, the makeup is _still_ untouched. I’m just waiting for Rod Sterling to hop the fuck out and call this one like the Twilight Zone episode it is.”

“Damn. Did you learn a lesson about humanity and the nature of fear, or is it one of those ‘wouldn’t it be fucked up if this was a thing that happened’ episodes?”

“I’m gonna say both. And watch your fucking mouth, little dude.”

Dave snorts, draining a glass of water in one go, trying to finger-comb his hair and making it look even more messy, somehow. Watching, he feels a tightness in his chest, a worry that there’s something horribly wrong and he isn’t there to _fix it_. And there’s nothing he can do. Dave could have a dead hooker in the bathroom, lines of blow across the top of the television, a whole assload of guns tucked barely out of the screen, and he wouldn’t know, and he’s just helpless, out here in the middle of nowhere.

He really, really doesn’t like guns.

‘Like Batman!’, Dave observed, the first time he mentioned it.

Like, y’know, someone who’s spent too much time around them, actually, but also like Batman, sure. Like Batman. He winces at the memory of the scars speckled across Gamzee’s abdomen.

“Bro? You okay?”

“Tired,” he says. “And I’m an hour ahead of you, so go to sleep.”

“You make a compelling case, but consider: it’s hard to talk to you while I’m unconscious.”

“You know what I mean, Dave.”

“Fine, I got you, bro. Seriously, worry about your own stuff, take care of yourself, everything’s fine here. Stoked for Friday, not stoked for the geometry quiz, but I’ll kick its ass anyway. You know the deal. I’m eating and sleeping periodically, bathing like a _pro_ now that the shower’s free 24/7, you walking environmental catastrophe, it’s all good.”

“Good,” he sighs. “Good.”

“Seriously, drive safe out there, okay? Don’t die in South Carolina. That’d be embarrassing for everyone.”

“That’s what I was saying!” he says. “I can’t do anything risky out here. Alarm bells sound in my brain, warning me of the prospective humiliation for my little bro. Don’t do it, Dirk, don’t drink Clown Boot Juice from an unlabelled flask on the road past midnight. The potential cost is just too high!”

“Christ,” Dave laughs. “Sounds like you’ve got everything under control.”

“You know me. Always do. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

“And go to sleep!” he adds, raising his voice as the screen goes dark. He thinks he catches Dave laughing again, but he otherwise can’t be sure he even heard him.

He lets his hand fall to his side, and nearly has a heart attack when he realizes Gamzee is about two feet from him, barely nestled in the shadows, sipping a bottle of… fucking _squirt_? Is that a soda or an AO3 tag warning, not that he has any idea what those are, or has ever trawled the music fandom archive for RPF of himself, ever. That would just be insane.

“_Fuck_, dude. The lurking is a lot to handle,” he breathes, shoving his phone in his pocket and turning to get in the car. Two more hours. Two more hours and he sleeps.

“I got no room to be all up and telling you this sort of thing, D-money, but you’re a good fuckin guy, you know?” Gamzee says, barely audible until he slides into the passenger seat. “All keeping everyone out of trouble and whatnot.”

That’s actually funny, but not wrong. He can’t decide whether to laugh or not, and ultimately comes down on the ‘not’ side of things.

“Uh, thanks, I guess.”

“Yeah. That shit’s how I motherfuckin figured it out. That you’re not real. All fake and hollow like everybody else. Too fuckin bad, my brother.”

He doesn’t register this as a threat.

_You wake right the fuck up, though._ Shit just got marginally more complicated, as shit is wont to do.

This time, when Gamzee turns to look at him with that paint-shadowed gaze, _you’re_ looking back. His eyes are watery and blue and unfocused. He’s crossed out of his mind.

You haven’t heard the whole Gamzee story - never cared enough to dig for it, the fucker’s fridged, for good reason - but you figure that’s probably for the best, with an uncomfortable sense of not-quite-remembering something that rises in your chest. His chest. Whatever. Now that you’re thinking in almost the same register, occasionally, this is probably going to get confusing.

“Hollow?” you ask.

“It’s a world of ghosts, my dogg. Can’t rightly expect you to all up and understand.”

He half-slumps against the window again, effectively cutting off that avenue of conversation, and you fade back, frowning, waiting for a chance to inquire again. Wondering what exactly is going on. Because this is a story, like all the others. It’s no easier or more difficult to take your own reins than any part before. The people surrounding you, the pace at which it moves, it’s nothing new. 

Except for the shitty clown in the passenger seat, which, for once, isn’t a self-referential deprecation. He’s getting white paint so deep into your interior that this version of you is definitely going to need to get his car detailed.

Either way, you’ll be here a while. No need to jump the gun.

He takes over again, tired enough not to notice the momentary lapse, which is terrifying enough to wake him up completely, realizing he’s five exits away from the point where he was last paying attention to the road, _fuck_. Gamzee’s still napping and being weird. The highway is nearly empty, but he hasn’t forgotten his promise to Dave and himself about not dying out here.

The radio back on, his mind on the speeding hunk of metal that he’s piloting up to their destination and nothing else, he drives. The billboards get higher up and brighter outside of hurricane country. The highway gets quieter, and they go longer without passing other cars. Some of the signs advertise South of the Border. They’re getting close. It’s all going to work out fine.

Gamzee blinks back into consciousness as they turn off the highway, the enormous sombrero (ostensibly the world’s largest, per numerous billboards) still lit up neon-bright, hanging overhead like the space needle. His grin stretches and cracks his thick facepaint.

“Aw, motherfuck, this shit is raw as hell!”

It’s a neon hellscape is what it is. Completely vacant in the off-season, though no one has told the guy in charge of turning off the lights. Not another car on the road, or apparently in any of the lots. Perversely… Mexico-themed. Cal couldn’t have possibly chosen a more disgusting, and inexplicably racist, tourist trap. A mascot named fucking _Pedro_, advertising fireworks in broken English, in 2019. He groans. Fiberglass statues of brightly-lacquered animals line the single street running through the crime against decency that is South of the Border, reflecting the garish neon with an intensity that rivals daylight.

Gamzee fuckin’ loves it, of course. He digs around in a hidden pocket of his baggy pants, produces several nondescript pills, and tosses them back, not just dry-swallowing, but _crunching_ them as he goes.

One sign advertises an exhibition of live alligators and crocodiles. Another heralds a 24-hour restaurant called Hot Tamale, and they pass the joint in question just before they turn into the only hotel the GPS can readily identify, which will just have to do.

It’s _also_ called South of the Border.

A water tower, old-fashioned and yellowed with age, looms over the proceedings, illuminated to spotlight-intensity, emblazoned with the acronym S.O.B.

Dirk’s stomach twists.

He’s tired enough to stay here. Fuck him, fuck his morals, he’s tired enough that he doesn’t give a fuck. Gamzee chuckles to himself and snaps a blurry picture of the water tower as they pull into a vacant roundabout. The front desk is visible through a dome of glass that encloses the lobby.

“Hop out,” he says. “Check if we have reservations. Should be under Cal.”

“Motherfuckin on it, my brother.”

He sighs and drives around until he finds the parking lot, stepping out with a duffle bag over each shoulder. They have some equipment, as well, just in case, but so far every venue has been outfitted with what they need. He checks that the truck bed is secure, and locks the cab.

On foot, he can see more clearly that the bizarre glass enclosure is called ‘Pedro’s Pleasure Dome’, and he shudders involuntarily, pushing open the door with the heel of his cowboy boot. A small concession to his ‘being from Texas’ deal.

He recognizes the expression on the face of the older woman at the front desk all too well. It’s approximately the same one that anyone in the customer service industry forced to interact with Gamzee for more than a few seconds ends up wearing.

“You don’t have a room,” she’s insisting. “Your _Cal_ called, got confused about how _room selection_ works, threatened us with charges of ‘suppressing lodging from the public’, and hung up.”

“Excuse me, ma’am?” he interrupts, smiling pleasantly but with enough rictus to accurately suggest that he’s as at the end of his fucking rope as she is. “I’m so sorry about my associate. We’ve been traveling all day. He’s unwell. Gamzee, go sit down with our luggage.”

The clown temporarily banished, both he and the woman behind the desk sigh in palpable relief.

“How can I help you?” she asks, after what is presumably a calming and deliberately meditative breath.

“Any room you have. As long as I can get a receipt, I’ll pay whatever you’re asking.”

“We don’t have a lot of rooms at this point in the season, I’m afraid,” she says, leafing through a registry contained in a thin binder. “A single. King-sized. At this point, your options are essentially to take it or leave it.”

_Oh._

_HELL._

_No._

No. No. No, you’re not doing this. You’ve read this one. Absolutely not. Empirically not. No, no, no. You’ll kill yourself first. You’ll hijack this body and kill yourself before you fuck this clown. Abso-fucking-lutely not.

He frowns at that intrusive line of thought.

“We’ll take it.”

_FUCK YOU._ Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

“Alright. Room 114.”

She trades him a set of actual keys for his credit card. He feels about ready to pass out on the grubby tile floor of the lobby, but somehow summons up the energy to pass her his ID, take his card back, and thank her for her help.

“C’mon, dude, up you go,” he directs Gamzee, hoisting his duffel onto his back, leaving Gamzee’s shit for him to negotiate. He’s going to lie the fuck down. At this point, he truly doesn’t give a shit where. The highway is looking like a viable option. This is nothing. Sharing a bed is fucking _nothing_.

_Shut the fuck up, you don’t know where that asshole has been. I do!_

Exhaustion only strengthens his resolve. Gamzee trails him out of the Pleasure Dome, lugging his duffel somewhat pitifully.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he announces, quietly but with a certainty as cold and solid as steel. “You’re going to take a fucking shower, because I’m not sleeping with a dude in clownface.”

“Aw, but motherfucker -”

“No ‘aw, but motherfucker’s.”

Gamzee frowns exaggeratedly, the effect all the more gruesome behind the paint, and nearly careens into the railing that separates the parking lot from the rooms. He finds 114 and unlocks it with no further comment.

“You’re first shower,” he says, chucking his duffel in and holding the door open as the over-cooled air rolls past them. “I’m checking for bedbugs. Make it fast.”

To his credit, Gamzee doesn’t argue, but he does slouch with a touch more melodrama than usual, very sulkily. Good. Fucking nothing seems to throw him. He’s almost perversely glad that he seems to be taking this seriously. Drugged up though he may be. Christ, so drugged up, so fucking always. In the aftermath of the shooting? In the aftermath of whatever fucked him up enough to think the clown thing could ever conceivably work outside of juggalo cults?

Is… is he in a juggalo cult? That would make some of the weird shit make sense. Fuck.

No evidence of bedbugs beneath the lining of the mattress, no droppings, at least it’s pretty clean. A single fly buzzes around the ceiling lamp. He puts his head in his hands and wishes to hell that he took the first shower. He wants to sleep. He wants to sleep more than he wants to understand any of this. It’s been such a long week.

Gamzee slinks out of the bathroom after a few minutes have passed, and he doesn’t pause for even a second, just slams the door behind him and hurls himself into the shower, which is already blissfully hot. Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck. It’s probably the fastest he’s ever finished a goddamned shower, and he doesn’t even pause to mentally high five himself for being such an environmentalist saint. He just towels off and heads right the fuck out with the damn thing around his waist. Night clothes time. Pillow barricade time. Sleep time!

He pauses after barely one step back into the room.

How the _shit_ is Gamzee’s stupid facepaint still intact. He _heard_ the shower running. There is no goddamned way he pulled a ‘five year old Dave with a shower allergy’ move and hid in the corner of the damn thing, right? _Right_? Oh god. He’s sleeping with this guy.

“I swear to fuck,” he snarls, forgetting about changing clothes entirely, searching his toiletries bag instead, coming up with one of his nice packets of fancy face-wipes, which he was hoping would last the entire tour. “If you don’t wipe that shit off, you can get your ass out to the truck and sleep there.”

“Aw, but Dirk,” Gamzee complains, catching the wipes in a shaky hand. “I hate to be all up and disappointing you! But it’s not the kind of shit what washes off, brother!”

He takes a wipe, his head lolling awkwardly as whatever the hell he took starts to hit, and scrubs at his ghastly painted cheek.

It comes away clean.

“It’s just how I’m like, homie, can’t be changing nothing.”

He closes the distance between them, takes the goddamned wipe - they smell like sea salt and rosewater, he loves these stupid wipes - and tries for himself. The paint doesn’t budge. When he thumbs over it, frowning, it feels almost like a burn scar, gnarled and rough and warm and part of the face underneath.

He draws back like he’s the one who’s been burned.

“Christ,” he breathes.

“That shit’s got nothing to do with it,” Gamzee says quietly, sagging as though beneath the weight of his own head and falling to the bed. “I got no fuckin clue what’s goin’ on half the time. It’s cool. It’s better.”

“Better than _what_?” he… you… both of you are fully in agreement on the topic of ‘what the hell’, so that’s nice.

He stills for a moment, laying supine, watching the fly circle and circle and circle around the overhead light.

“Vriska says it’s Oblivion or some shit.”

“Who the fuck is -” You cut him-slash-yourself off before he can get sidetracked with stupid questions. Gamzee ignores your aborted outburst. The fly buzzes away from the light, hovering closer to his face. He watches it, unblinking. Hell of a couple of pills he must have taken.

“It’s redemption,” he adds. “If you let it be.”

You hold your tongue, watching, water dripping down from your still-wet hair, your chest cold and naked.

The fly inches lower, alighting on his open eye. He doesn’t flinch. Smiles, though, not at you. Just up.

“Redemption,” you prompt.

“Yeah, motherfucker. Redemption. The real shit. The kind that burns you to nothing, crunches your bones, tears you open, bleeds you till you’re fuckin dry.”

“You’re… redeeming yourself, by doing this bullshit?” you demand. “Fuck, do you know what I’ve had to - what I’ve lived through, what I’ve watched myself be -”

“Sh, brother. You’re not seeing the motherfuckin truth of it. I’ve been up in this business as long as anyone has. Shit, me and Vriska, we’ve been in this bitch since… since the beginning. I don’t got it in me to be redeemed, dogg. What you got layin here, this shit’s as good as I get. Dig out the rot, there’s nothing left of me but the shit what was hiding the rotted-out pieces in the first place. Built hollow. Plenty of room in here for miracles. Not an inch for fuckall else.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not bullshitting nobody, my dude.”

He hasn’t blinked. The fly wriggles around grotesquely. His smile stays wide and vague and directed at nothing in particular.

“Eh, but what the motherfuck do I know, right? Nothing to me but an empty juju. They keep trying to get me all filled up with something good, with faith and friends and… it slides right out, easy-like. Never meant to fit. Never real. It was never motherfuckin’ real, my ninja. I was never like them. There’s nothing in me what can be redeemed, on account of there’s nothing in me at all. They still try. They keep all up and trying, trying, trying, but best I can be is a puppet, Dirkster. They gotta take their hand out of me eventually. And it all falls apart without the words to fill me up.”

The fly buzzes away, and he falls silent.

No amount of prodding will rouse him back to speech, though his boney chest rises and falls evenly, and he isn’t dead. Just a lanky, ghoulish body, barely animated, barely anything.

Fuck it.

Dirk sleeps on the floor.

....

“Gosh darn it, Dirk, can’t you cut me a little slack?” Jane sighs, setting aside her cane to limp back out to take her turn at shuffleboard. “You’re unsettlingly fast in that thing! I can’t keep up!”

“Not sorry. I would’ve made one for you, if you weren’t so goddamn _mobile_.”

“I may yet take you up on that. It’s going to rain soon.”

The sky overhead is blue and clear and ripples with heat distortion when he squints up at it, but he can feel what she means. He’s in a chair half the time, including today. His hip and his shitty back have been acting up horribly, whether that’s the rain talking or just his own crumbling health, and he hates it, broadcasting his inability to stand up to the world, or at least to the other residents of Kobernick. 

He ultimately hates canceling on Jane more. She puts a lot of effort into their little outings, all dolled up like she’s ready to lead an HOA meeting or something, pearls and all. It’s honestly very impressive.

“Compromise: I’ll pull you behind me on a skateboard,” he suggests.

“Oh, the attendants will love that.”

“I’ve been grinding my ‘curmudgeonly’ stat and totally neglecting my street cred as resident take-no-shit badass. This is a first step to remedying that untenable state of affairs.”

Jane snorts, giving her disc a sharp push and wincing slightly at the movement to her shoulder. The sliding disc knocks his last disc handily into the 10-off section, and he curses.

“Take that!” she declares triumphantly, grinning over at him, and he rolls his eyes as emotively as he ever does, which is to say, not much at all.

It’s not a bad life. Damn good, actually. Better than he deserves. He wakes up, reads the paper, picks up a novel in the sun room, endures the fussing of the nurses on staff, tries not to be too much of an old asshole, much as he jokes about it. Daily outings with Jane are a high point. The mandatory weekly widowers group therapy session is a low point. It happens like clockwork. He eats the same breakfast every morning.

Time doesn’t matter in Florida, where the only seasons are ‘hot with more rain’ and ‘hot with less rain’. Days blur together. He keeps track of how often he needs his chair. It’s more than he would like.

“I think,” Jane muses, watching as he rolls back over to take his turn. “I think… we need a caper of some sort to liven things up.”

“You’re reading my mind,” he says, angling his modified pusher-stick - he really doesn’t know jack shit about this game, other than that if he and Jane get out to the gardens early enough, they can have it for themselves - and preparing for his move.

“A bit of mischief!” she adds, laughing to herself.

“Well, let’s get on that. There are only so many schemes one can pull off with barely one working leg between two people.”

“I thought I might run for the social chair of the ladies’ group,” she says, and it suddenly becomes clear that this isn’t a spur of the moment thing - Jane’s been thinking about this for some time.

“Well, mazel. I’d vote for you, though I don’t think they’ll let me. Real finicky about the ‘dude’ thing, that ladies’ group of yours.”

He pushes the disc, missing Jane’s last endeavor, but landing squarely in the eight point zone. They’ve been doing this for a while, and even with the altered method of play required for a seated septuagenarian, he likes to think he’s damn good at it.

“I just mean that, well, I could probably use some help with the whole kerfuffle of it, you know! You’re good with these sorts of things.”

“I could have sworn you pledged never to get involved in politics again after the city council fiasco.”

“Well, yes, I may have said some… or several… or rather a lot of things to that effect!” she admits. “But I get restless.”

“Some people have hobbies other than running for offices they don’t want,” he suggests, then chuckles when she pouts at him, an expression that belongs on someone who looks far less like an elderly Jackie O. “Which isn’t to disparage your vice of choice, Jane, come on. I’m an enabler, you know that.”

“I do want the office!”

“Oh, really. Name one _lady_ in the ladies’ group.”

Her frown grows even more exaggerated.

“That isn’t the point, Dirk. It’s the principle of the thing.”

“Even _I_ can name a lady in the ladies’ group, just as a point of interest.”

“You would have had an even pithier reply had I named myself. Sometimes the greater part of conversational tact is knowing when to cut one’s losses,” she sniffs.

“Well, you’re definitely cleaning my clock at shuffleboard.”

“I’ll take what I can get, these days.”

A few fluffy clouds have materialized overhead as they speak, a preamble to the typical afternoon storm. Neither of them have really managed to get used to the weather in Florida, and disparaging it is a popular topic of conversation, when others fail them, or when they want to avoid some legitimate area of confusion or concern. Which is surprisingly often, for a couple of people who don’t _do_ anything.

They did plenty, he thinks, before they ended up exiled here, to a twenty-four acre paradise garden on Florida’s west coast, presumably to quiet down, quit complaining, and die with whatever dignity they can manage.

He doesn’t blame Dave for not visiting. It’s a hike, and he didn’t exactly give him much to remember fondly. Wouldn’t mind seeing him and Karkat - wouldn’t mind any break from the monotony of existence - but it doesn’t happen, and he doesn’t talk about it, even with Jane.

“Fine. Let’s say I accept your proposition,” he says, with a practiced formality that makes her giggle. “How can I be of service, Jane?”

“I don’t… I don’t exactly know, I suppose I could have thought it through. You’re a better strategist than I am, after all. There are other ladies running! None of whom I could, ah, name, but - well.”

She shrugs helplessly, setting aside her cue.

“What’s your game, Jane?” he asks quietly.

“You seem sad,” she says, not meeting his eyes. “I thought it might be fun. Like old times.”

“Old times? Last year isn’t old times.”

Last year, he could still walk more days than he couldn’t, but he pointedly doesn’t reference that, opting to cross his arms and raise his eyebrows high enough above his glasses to let her know his thoughts on the matter.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she says, then winces. “I mean, let’s look at the gardens, I understand they’re installing a new firebush near the temple.”

“Delightful. Lead the way.”

An attendant takes notice as they leave and begins to tidy up the shuffleboard court. The clouds gather and darken overhead. It’s still a beautiful park. Close enough to Lido Beach that the air smells like salt and sea, though he’s not willing to go to the trouble of getting an aide to take him down to see it for himself when it’ll only remind him of everything he can’t do anymore. The vague reminder of the ocean’s existence is more than enough for him. He doesn’t not like it here. This isn’t a cruel place to die.

“I do have ideas for the group, of course,” she says. “I think we ought to be putting our charitable donations to the issue of homelessness rather than environmental preservation. It’s more in keeping with our values, and has a heck of a lot more bearing on actual people than any nonsense about planting sea oats or what have you.”

“Hm,” he says. “Sea level rise and all -”

“Urgent, I know,” she sighs. “But it’s impossible to walk about downtown without nearly tripping on someone panhandling, and we really ought to be solving human problems first. As though we do much of anything so far as sincerely solving problems goes. Ha.”

“Ha indeed. Sounds like a campaign platform to me.”

“See, I knew you’d come around! Between the two of us, we can make them see sense.”

“Whatever you want, Jane. Seriously, I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Oh.”

The air is hot and humid and still, in contrast with the fast-shifting clouds overhead. The crowds will be leaving the beaches, soon, fearing a lightning storm, retreating to one of the many icecream shops in the island’s downtown area or back home.

It’s a shame, he thinks, to die without a real home, but he can’t blame the facility for that.

Jane grits her teeth, tapping her cane double-time to catch up with him. He’s sped up involuntarily, and slows his chair down when he realizes he’s making it hard for her to keep up.

“I really must get myself one of those,” she says, cracking a sad smile. “This hip of mine. Jade is coming down in a few weeks to help me out with my surgery. She so enjoyed meeting you last time.”

“You raised a hell of a daughter.”

“I did, didn’t I? John has such a time getting away from his shop, I understand, but it’s so gosh darn nice that Jade is able to be flexible and all! I’m not pulling your leg, either, she really did find you charming. I don’t know what Dirk Strider _she_met, but -”

“Oh, I see how it is.”

“Do you, you old fart?” she laughs, patting his steering hand.

“Take it easy, Crocker, my ego is fragile.”

“Really bringing out the claws, Strider. You’re in fine form, and you know it.”

“I didn’t hear that you’d set a date for the surgery,” he adds, once they’re back to traversing the garden paths.

“Fairly recently. The fifteenth. Her visit will coincide with Sukkot, but so will my shiny new hip. It can’t be avoided.”

He nods.

“So this election business, then. You planning on campaigning from the hospital, Jane?”

“Simply keeping myself occupied! And you’d be helping, of course. I’m sure Jade would find the whole thing delightful.”

“Can you _take care of yourself_, for once in your damn life?”

“A little late for either of us to start in on that, dear,” she says, smiling down at him sadly.

“Don’t be like that,” he grouses, refusing to meet her eyes.

They stop as they approach the temple, where a work crew is lowering a massive bush into the freshly-dug earth. It isn’t yet in bloom, but the shiny dark leaves and the dense, shrublike foliage have their own kind of beauty. The project is finishing in good time. The sky has turned entirely moody.

“Oh, I hope it flowers by the time she visits,” Jane says. “She loves flowers.”

“That would be nice.”

He leans back heavily in his chair, just watching, as she settles some of her weight on the armrest, wincing as she rebalances herself with the cane. Jane refuses to let him be lonely, here, no matter how hard he pushes her away. He’s _not_ terrified of seeing her leave for the hospital. Not at all. Just appreciative of her body, here, close to his, casually occupying space with him while everything else feels so far away.

“Will you have any family down for -” she begins to ask, staring off into the middle distance like she’s barely considering her words.

“No,” he says shortly.

“You’ll be welcome to join us,” she says quickly. “For any part of it. They’re grateful that I managed to make a friend down here - historically, it hasn’t been my strong suit, ha.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I hope you do.”

The firebush deposited and the earth folded in around it, the crew begins to disperse, carrying and driving away equipment, leaving the plant standing alone. Unwatered, in advance of the storm, which must have been predicted. Jane turns slowly, leaving him room to bring his chair back around.

“The weather changes so quickly down here,” she notes, covering her eyes and squinting up at the light spot where the sun used to be.

The towering cumulonimbus clouds overhead finally join into a uniform, opaque layer of thunderheads. He takes an umbrella from the side pocket of his wheelchair and offers it to Jane, just as the first drops of rain begin to fall from the tumultuous grey sky.

She accepts it, with a sigh, and they slowly head back to the residential facility.

....

The sky overhead is uniformly blue and cloudless. There’s not so much as a whisper of a breeze. Just sun and radiant heat from the surface of the roof and still air, hot enough to scald. The searing blue of it casts a tremulous inferior mirage across the cement surface on which he places his feet carefully, calculatingly.

He can almost feel the tracks of his sneakers fucking _melting_. Some bullshit. He likes these shoes. No reason to drag this out any longer than it needs to go.

With unnecessary showmanship, he flips his katana around his wrist, catching it easily in the palm of his gloved hand.

“Don’t fuck around,” he warns her. “It’s too hot for that bullshit.”

‘That bullshit’, though, has becoming an alarming constituent element of Rose’s approach to sparring. He’s trying to break her of it, got her spitting mad before this particular session, probably enough to gut him where he stood, if she’d been armed. Those wizard books are a shitty influence, anyway. He’s read the Wikipedia page, a bunch of Taoist horseshit about accepting the good and the evil in oneself and the fuckin’ balance of nature. Absolutely useless in a game with right answers and wrong answers, good and evil laid out in stark relief.

He knows exactly what’s right and what’s wrong. Anything that keeps her alive for a minute longer is all the ‘good’ he needs. Shit like that, shit that softens her up to ambiguity, that’s the shit that’ll get her killed. That, and her penchant for melodrama.

She circles him slowly, waiting for an opening that won’t come. She’s going to have to strike first. He won’t humor her - he’s got the scars from that particular lesson, one that she taught him as much as he taught her. One of these days, she’s going to fucking kill him.

Maybe he went a little far, chucking her book out the window - how’d she even get that thing, they don’t leave the apartment, or _she_ doesn’t at least - but from the way her glare is smoldering behind her shades, he figures it worked. That she’ll break the detente, as she should.

She’s got to get used to it, having to make things happen on her own. It’s not like any of the other kids are going to do it for her, from what he’s heard of them. Something tells him that Harley didn’t exactly raise a take-charge kind of kid, and he doesn’t know jack shit about Jane’s ward. And every update he gets from Roxy’s direction that doesn’t come in the form of a death threat - real cute, Rox, _try it_, the scope of that shitty rifle doesn’t reach damn near far enough to stop him - just makes him more certain about the necessity of what he’s doing, here.

Skaia’s going to tear these fucking kids apart if he doesn’t get there first, and put her back together afterwards, stronger and better and more capable. She’ll hold their fucking session together. There’s not an option not to. Who else is going to step the fuck up?

As he figured she would, she finally steels herself and strikes. Part of Rose’s strength is in her unexpectedness, the other part in her actual, physical strength. No kid of his is going to grow up into some sort of squishy-wizard combat role. She’s tough, hits hard and can keep dishing it out, even when she’s taking major punishment of her own. Not by her nature, but because she’s a quick learner. That’s his expectation of her: that she learn.

She’s doing a killer fucking job of _that_.

Her first move is pretty textbook, per the metaphysical textbook that he teaches from, which is to say, she goes for his throat. Barely any windup, most of the gesture concealed by the way she angles her blade, unerringly focused on the seam where his neck meets his jaw. He’s forced to either duck the strike, throwing him off-balance and out of a favorable position to retaliate, or to meet the strike and temporarily leave his chest unguarded, one move behind. There’s a reason it’s in the textbook, is what he’s goin’ for. Shit works.

Against anyone but him, at least. He doesn’t just duck, he rolls, sweeping her legs out from under her with the flat of his blade. She plays to maim at best, to kill at worst; he’s got no fucking reason to send a legless kid into the medium, so he plays to _win_. Lately, that’s starting to look more and more like playing to survive.

She’s a _really_ quick learner.

By the time she refinds her footing and makes to strike at him again, he’s no longer where she expects him to be, darting in from the side and delivering a sharp rejoinder in the form of a blow to the ribs, just enough edge to it to draw blood, not enough to _really_ hurt her. She whips around, ignoring the damage, and tries to gut him.

He slips out of her reach, and she follows through. Close enough to catch his shirt, to tear the cheap cotton fabric, but not quite reaching her quarry. Her next strike is immediate, careless, effective, because it’s not what he expects from her. She pushes forward again, strikes at an upward angle, the tip of her blade skimming across his collarbones before he can retaliate.

And then, christ, she goes for him again. Same move, almost exactly, forging on and on, almost irrationally, throwing herself off-balance and into vulnerability solely for the sake of _hurting_ him, any way that she can.

Yeah, he really pissed her off. This probably isn’t going to end easily, whether or not she’s impressed him a little, but it’s worth a try. The thing is, he can’t just let her _win_. It’ll embolden her too much for the next time. She’s not ready to beat him, yet. There are years of this left for both of them to survive.

So he pushes back, strikes at her hand instead of at her core, a bit of a low blow. She doesn’t drop the sword, but her next blow is even less coordinated, complicated by the blood flowing from her sliced-open knuckles.

Fine. Not the easy way.

She swings again, and he dances around the strike. Ducks out of her reach, then back in. She aims low, since the damage to her hand makes it hard to aim high.

He strikes her across the face, hard enough to stun, and she stops, stumbles backwards.

Too close to the edge of the roof. He hasn’t been paying attention to anything but her. Now, she teeters dangerously towards it, and he curses himself for his lack of foresight.

In an instant, he’s got her by the wrist, twisting the sword out of her grip and turning her awkward momentum into an abrupt descent to the rough gravel surface of the roof. She lands hard, rolls, and tries to scramble to her feet, finds her sword and grips it like a lifeline, not looking away from him for a second.

Her gaze is somehow cold as steel and hot enough to scald. Almost enough to give him pause, this level of naked fucking hatred in the eyes of a kid still a year away from middle school. Blood trickles from her split brow, pooling in the hollow of her orbit. She doesn’t blink.

“I’ll kill you,” she insists, gritting her teeth as she struggles up to her knees, chewed up by the rough landing. “I swear I will.”

“Not today, little lady,” he replies flatly, feinting left, handily bypassing her shaky attempt at a blocking strike, and bringing the base of his sword’s tsuka back against her jaw with an audible sound of metal on flesh and bone.

Before she can fall back into the gravel, stunned insensate by the blow, he catches her. Effortlessly; she’s small for her age. Her eyelashes flutter shut as her sword clatters to the ground with a sense of finality. Probably for the best, since whether or not it’s what he’s going for, it can be fucking terrifying sometimes, how much she visibly hates him. It’s impressive, honestly. 

Every layer he digs deeper, she turns up something new, something _stronger_.

With every push, she pushes back harder. He’s curious. Unbearably so. How much she _could_ be, someday. Just how far he can take this. Roxy’s coddled little kid won’t stand a chance out there without someone ready to make the hard fuckin’ calls, make shit happen when it needs to happen. She’s not ready yet. She will be, though.

Back in the apartment, he lays her out on the couch, checks the bruise swelling on her jaw, lifts her eyelid briefly - no concussion this time. It’s getting more difficult, though, to put a stop to her inertia in combat, even when she’s beaten. He doesn’t want to _damage_ her, but he can’t exactly let her kill him, either. Not yet. It’s a difficult road he treads. Luckily, he learns as quickly as she does.

She stirs, her eyes flickering back open briefly, settling on him, closing again. So she’s fine.

Satisfied, he moves leisurely to the kitchen to retrieve a first aid kit and inspects the gash across his clavicles. Shallow, but reopened with the climb down from the roof. A solid attempt. A for effort. Might even need a stitch or two.

He whips around at an unexpected noise to see her back on her feet, watching him.

“Well?” she says.

If he hadn’t fuckin’ raised her, he would completely miss the suppressed pain in her tone. Something else, too. She’s as curious as he is. That’s the reason, he thinks, that she hasn’t yet cut his throat in his sleep.

“Not bad,” he concedes.

She nods once, clears her throat to hide the way she winces with the movement.

“Clean yourself up,” he tells her, tossing the kit her way once he’s fished out some gauze and tape for himself. “I’ll call in for Thai.”

Her favorite, though she’d never tell him something like that. He pays attention. It’d be moronic not to. He doesn’t just push. The dance of it is in the reeling-back.

If there’s a part of him that thinks any of this is disgusting - and sometimes there is, nobody’s perfect without some maintenance, he knows that - he’s well-practiced at suppressing it. With Rose in the house, he can’t afford to be lax in his psychological grip. Not on her, not on himself. He won’t concede a millimeter.

_Not even when you scream. And you _are _screaming. There’s no way that this is what she meant. There’s nothing to fucking learn here. You know you’ve hurt her. You know, you know, you know. But you can’t… you can’t…_

He ignores that.

Doubts are merely something to be overcome, after all. He’s considered this extensively. He knows exactly what he’s doing, at every interval, every decision that, for a different person, might be a moment of hesitation to be exploited. Every move is calculated. Placing the order for dinner, massaman curry, which is her favorite. She’s slipped and asked for it specifically before. He waits for her response.

“Are we watching something?” she asks casually, ignoring the olive branch he’s holding over her, tantalizingly out of her reach.

“If you want. Just not fucking _Labyrinth_ again. Branch out,” he says.

Admittedly, the household collection is limited. He has standards for the kind of media he brings in. She glances back at him periodically, careful not to completely turn her back as she runs her hand over the stack of DVDs until she finds what looks like The Dark Crystal. Not a bad choice.

He nods once, knowing that she’ll see despite the fact that she’s deliberately not looking directly at him.

_You can’t fucking share a skull with this piece of shit for a second longer._

See, he has thoughts like those, too. It’s stopped bothering him in time. This is the price he pays, and he pays it willingly, unhesitatingly, for the person she’ll be when the reckoning comes. She’ll be unstoppable once she’s killed him.

Someday, she’ll understand. She’ll be what she needs to be, and he’ll be dead. Isn’t there some dignity in that?

_No_, you scream, _no, no, no!_

But you know, god, you know, and it’s not just the unrelenting power and certainty of this self, that what you did to her wasn’t any better. You’ve never been able to give a shit about anyone without bleeding them dry and calling it love. Is that what she wants you to understand about yourself?

You can’t stop him. You barely have the juice to _think_ outside of his warped-ass solipsistic _bullshit_, he’s writing over you and it’s not even making him break a sweat, because he _is_ you, and thinking like this is the most natural thing in the world, what’s really hard is _fighting it_, and you can’t, you can’t, you can’t…

He shakes his head, dismissing these musings, a near-unnoticeable gesture that she definitely notices anyway, but is smart enough not to comment on.

“Did I tell you to stare at a blank screen? Put the movie on or don’t, no skin off my nose,” he says shortly, annoyed without really comprehending why.

She starts the movie, though she doesn’t seat herself, waiting to see what he’ll do, first. He makes a show of putting their swords away in the kitchen, puttering about with a puppet he’s been meaning to revise, probably needs some work on the hairline. Even when she doesn’t seem to be watching him, he knows she is. They have an understanding. No one goes un-observed in the Strider household. Not for a second.

It’s all preparation. She’s caught on to that much, doesn’t fight that particular element of things anymore.

This is storycraft, is what it is. He’s raising a heroine. For all it won’t be his story, he’s ensuring it will be _a_ story, that hers will be worth watching, that it won’t be a tragedy or a slaughter.

The food arrives. He pays; she watches. He watches her watching, and sets the food down on the coffee table, taking his own container of curry and putting his feet up. She approaches almost too slowly to track her movements, picking up her own food as though it might bite her, as though he might have done something to it.

With a peculiar level of familiarity, and an even more asynchronous sigh of sincere exhaustion, she sits next to him, stiff and straight-backed. At first.

As the movie goes on, she begins to nod off. It’s been a long day, and it’s not as though she hasn’t seen this one before. The first time her head sags until it connects with his arm, she jolts away as though she’s been struck, shifts back into her artifice-heavy posture of complete indifference.

The second time, though he knows for a fact that she isn’t asleep yet, that the impact must have woken her up, she stays where she lands, the bloody gauze over her eye pressed against his shoulder, her weight against him. He doesn’t react either. The movie ends.

He brushes her hair from her face, checks. Her eyelashes are quivering. As though she’d trust him enough to actually sleep within a foot of him. She isn’t stupid.

She doesn’t fight, though, when he lifts her into his arms and carries her to her room, tucks her in.

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell where the game begins and where a very different game… ends. Either way, she plays along. And so does he. There isn’t much of a choice. Some things are inevitable. Rose Strider’s death-by-Sburb isn’t one of them. Not so long as he has a hand in things.

From the corner of his eye, as he closes her bedroom door, he sees the purple flash of her gaze, and he wonders if she sees him, too.

All too well, he thinks.

....

They’re playing at being cats when it happens. Arguing about typical cat behaviors, more accurately, since as they’ve gotten older, games of pretend are still fun, but not just for their own sake. They’re in different classes in preschool, which is almost definitely the result of their mom’s interference, so they’ve been forced to make new friends and play new games, lately, as well as to readjust the parameters of the old ones to better match the way they interact, having learned that other children exist.

Other children exist, and they play games other than ‘cats’ and ‘horses’. Idiots.

Roxy is insistent that cats scratch furniture to sharpen their claws to catch prey. He’s pretty sure that he knows better. Their many-toed tabby, Sparrowhawk, has never caught _prey_ in his life. Why would he scratch up their couch, then? Obviously to keep his claws _dull_, since he can’t exactly work a trimmer himself.

To make his point - to win the bickering match, more like, though in hindsight, he’s not certain how the example would have contributed to a decisive victory - he rakes his own nails down the coarse-grained wood of their backyard’s high picket fence.

He neither sharpens nor dulls his nails, of course.

All he manages to do is wedge about half an inch of jagged wood under one of them.

It’s more of a shock than anything, at first. He’s arrested mid-motion, and instead of turning to show Roxy the results of his labors, he finds himself staring down at his hands as his middle finger reddens, turning hot and wet with blood. He doesn’t cry, just stares, thunderstruck. It’s more terrible than anything he’s ever imagined. There’s _so much blood_. The world is ending, he’s dying, and he doesn’t even know how to react.

Luckily, Roxy figures out what’s going on in a few suspended seconds and bolts inside, calling for their mom, panicking with all of the frantic energy that he can’t seem to summon up. His cheeks are slick with tears, his whole hand is _burning_, but he can’t bring himself to say a word.

“Come on!” Roxy insists, scrambling back out into the yard. “Dirk, come on!”

He follows her mutely, dread coiling in his chest. He’s definitely dying. Stupid, stupid, stupid. His dad says that’s the ‘s-word’ that people are always talking about, and he’d better not go around saying it, but based on the way it makes his mom laugh, he’s pretty sure he and Roxy are being messed with. And it _is_ stupid! What a stupid thing to do.

Without thinking about it, he tries to wipe his cheeks dry with his injured hand before his mom can see him, crying like a little baby for something that was… completely his fault, but he reaches up involuntarily with the injured hand, smears blood on his face, and finally breaks down, the strangled sob in his chest unfurling just as she comes down the stairs, a first aid kit tucked under her arm.

“See?” Roxy says breathlessly, as he bites back another wail. “See, mom, I said, you heard, I wasn’t making it up, he’s hurt really really really bad, are we gonna go to the hospital? Is he gonna die?”

“Quiet, dear,” his mom says, shooing Roxy away with a brisk flick of her hand. “Please go play in your room. There’s no need to make such a fuss. Your brother will be fine. Hysterics will do him no good.”

“Yes, mom.”

Subdued, somewhat, Roxy half-slinks away with a last baleful glance at Dirk, mouthing ‘sorry’ as though she has anything to be sorry for. He shakes his head, still fighting back the deluge of tears that badly wants to come pouring out, and she frowns and disappears.

“Sit down,” his mom directs him, pulling out a chair from the dining room table. “That looks unpleasant.”

He nods, lips pressed tight together. She will _not_ have to calm him down like she’s always having to get Roxy to calm down whenever basically anything happens. His teacher says he’s very mature for his age. Said so right to his dad’s face, when he picked them up on Friday afternoon. Roxy pouted the whole way home, since all they had to say about her was that she could stand to let other kids have a turn during read-aloud.

It’s hard to impress his mom, and perilously easy to disappoint her. He lives for her nods of acknowledgement, for the moments when her gaze flickers away from her laptop or her knitting or her phone call and onto him. Even more for her rare small expressions of approval, never more than a twist of the corner of her mouth.

“How on earth did you manage this?” she asks, more to herself than to him, as she inspects his hand. “Sit still. We’ll need to clean this up first, to get some idea of the damage. This will burn badly”

Still wordless, he nods again as she saturates a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol and wipes down his fingertip. It does burn, just as bad as she said it would. He doesn’t cry. He’s not crying anymore. She watches his expression impassively.

“What happened?” she prompts, actually asking him now.

He has never felt so stupid in his entire life.

“I… scratched the fence,” he says. “We were playing cats.”

“I see,” she says seriously. “Have you learned something?”

“Yes,” he sniffs. “Promise, I have. I won’t do it again.”

“I’m glad to hear it. It may be difficult, but a splinter like this needs to be taken out.” She takes a pair of forceps from the first aid supplies, and hands them to him without ceremony. “Work quickly and get it over with. The healing will begin once it’s removed.”

He blanches, but takes the forceps without question. With all the blood cleaned off, it doesn’t look quite as bad as he thought at first. A little less than half an inch, actually, the dark brown of the wood clearly visible, wedged up underneath his nail, surrounded by what looks like a weird bloody bruise.

She gestures expectantly.

“Can you…?” he says tremulously, the forceps quivering between the thumb and two forefingers of his left hand. “I don’t know how to…”

“It’s quite straightforward. It will hurt, but pain is temporary. Don’t let it fester.”

Just a splinter. Just do it, just do it, he tries to grit his teeth and just _do it_, but it’s as though his hand won’t move. He blinks back tears and tries again, touches it, barely, and flinches.

“I would prefer not to sit here all day,” she says gently, offering him a hand. “Of course, I can take care of it for you.”

“No!” he says. “I can do it!”

She sighs.

“Then please, be my guest.”

The problem is, the protruding end is so small, and he loses his nerve every time he gets close enough to grip it. The forceps are shiny grey metal and sharp at the ends, sharp enough to dig for it, but he can’t quite make himself go that far. He snips near the end where it pokes out, and he misses, and he groans and tries again. He’s trying, he’s trying so hard.

She’s never really cared about that, though, except in the cool, disaffected sort of way that mothers sort of have to care, when it comes to their kids. In a way that doesn’t mean anything, hollow reassurances. He just wants to show her he can do more than try. He can do it right, he really can, she can trust him, she can expect him to get it right, he’ll get it right next time -

“Sweet fuck, Rose, Roxy’s crying in her room, what the _hell_ is going on? Shit. Fuck. Hi, Dirk. I mean, _heck_. Switch ‘heck’ in for all of those… words. Yeah.”

“You’re home early,” his mom observes.

“They don’t need me on set twenty-four-seven, it’s not the first SBaHJ film, my people know the ropes. Got a bunch of goddamn Ropes Scholars down there, with postgraduate degrees in wiping their own asses without me breathing down their necks.”

She laughs, once.

“This has gone on long enough, Dirk. Let me take care of it.”

His father kneels to inspect the wound, and he jerks away before either of them can touch it.

“I can do it!” he insists again, his vision swimming with frustrated tears.

This time, he wipes them away with his elbow, hunching over his own hand almost protectively.

“That doesn’t look good,” his dad says, as much to him as to his mom, who has leaned away to give him space.

He tenses every muscle in his body, locks himself in place, and digs the forceps in directly where it hurts the worst. Searching blindly, he screws his eyes closed and just leans into the hurt of it. Feeling like he deserves it. He has to deserve it, or it wouldn’t have happened.

And then he wrenches it out.

“Shit!” his dad swears, as he bursts into tears, drops the forceps, and curls into a ball on the oversized chair, sobbing and bleeding and _still hurting_, it hurts so much!

It’s his mom who finally leans in to pick him up, holds him against the shoulder of her starched purple day-dress, pats his back comfortingly.

“There, now,” she says. “Well done.”

“Well done?” his dad objects. “That’s a tree that was wedged in his finger! Urgent care should still be open, I’ll call ahead. He needs a tetanus shot, at least, or - or _something_, christ.”

She sighs, palpably since she’s holding him close.

“We’ll need to disinfect it again,” she warns him, and it’s almost too much, the threat of another bout with the searing pain of the alcohol-soaked cotton ball, a _shot_, he doesn’t want a _shot_!

But nothing, probably, could be worse than what he just did. What he did to himself, and what he undid.

Disinfected, bandaged, and dry-eyed, his parents send him off to his room to grab his coat and summon Roxy, but he waits outside of the dining room, listening surreptitiously as they speak.

“He doesn’t need coddling, Dave. He’ll be as much as you permit him to be.”

“Yeah, he’s also barely five years old. Five year olds need to be coddled! When the hell else is anyone going to coddle him?”

“Ideally, never. As I said, he doesn’t need it. Roxy, now, who you may be thinking of -”

“They’re both kids!”

“They’re _our_ kids. It should devastate you, the thought that anyone would treat them as though they’re incapable of managing their own affairs.”

“I feel like kind of a broken record, here, Rose, because let me just reiterate, they are _five years old_. Our respectively fucked up childhoods being shitty is kind of the opposite of an excuse to -”

“Are you accusing me of making their childhood _shitty_?”

“Uh. I…”

He can practically hear her massaging her temples - her long sigh, at least, is audible through the doorway.

“I’m -”

“No, I’m sorry, Dave. Their health comes first. This can wait until after we’ve finished at the clinic. If you _are_ going to be at home like this, which we would all love, we’ll have to figure some of this out. And we will.”

“Fuck, Rose, _I’m_ sorry if I -”

“You didn’t. Let’s pencil this in for tonight, unless your illustrious Ropes Scholars need you back on set?”

“Hey, when I say they know the ropes, I’m talking _rope scientists_, I’m talking materials engineers that spend all day staring at carbon nanotubules and making notes about their tensile strength in between getting me coffee, I’m talking _physics_, I’m -”

Dirk scrambles away in time to avoid the kissing noises that ensue. 

Bluh. Parents.

....

“I can’t look at myself like that. Not for long enough to do what I’d have to do,” he admits, sprawled sideways and upside down on his best friend’s bed, shoulders suspended over the edge, hair nearly brushing the floor.

It’s too late and too early for this shit. Roxy hasn’t broken out the alc, yet, though he will by the end of the night. For the moment, it’s just the two of them, him spewing bullshit, Roxy giving him a hard time for it. That’s basically what college is all about.

“You don’t think that sounds just a li’l melodramatic?” Roxy counters, equally akimbo on the old beanbag chair tucked in the corner of his room. “Just like, a little bit? A scootch? A smidgen? An eensy weensy little tidbit of melodrama, maybe, a crumb for a starving mouse?”

“C’mon, Rox, you know how I feel about the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

“I hate to break it to you, Dirk, but people see your face all the time. It’s a good thing you’re sitting, er, laying down. I can see it _right now_, bro. Sorry to get too real in here.”

“Scandal, horror,” he replies, deadpan, pausing to drape an arm over his forehead anyway.

Roxy snorts.

“Fine. Your drawing class sucks, your professor is committing a hate crime against you personally by assigning a self portrait, and you should be compensated heavily for the emotional distress of this unimaginably difficult time. You big whiny baby.”

“Was that so hard, dude?”

“Ask me when I finish hemorrhaging. The catastrophic internal trauma inflicted by those words was just un-real.”

“Portrait of the new asshole Roxy ripped me when I bitched at him over this project,” he suggests, rolling onto his stomach, the better to stick out his tongue out at his old friend.

“Spicy.”

“Won’t fly with this professor, though. He’s big on technique and even bigger on making everybody’s life a living hell. I swear to fuck, Rox, I used to think I _liked_ drawing.”

“So the only way to pass this class is to stare into a mirror for a bajillion hours, painstakingly sketching out every plane of that handsome mug of yours?”

“The literal only way. He wants a photorealistic face. Accept no substitutes.”

“Okay, that does kind of suck. Like, hello, art much?”

He laughs.

“Art fairly little, actually. Theory much.”

“You’re a brave man. I finished my requirement in a media theory class that had zero pretensions about being anything but a leftist book club. It was lit as hell. Just argued about Marxism for a few hours a week, bam, fine arts credit. And you know me, I’m the king of talking about Marx. The professor was like, hey, who wants to talk about Marx? And it’d be eight in the morning, when most people don’t do much expounding on Marxist theory. But there I’d be, like a jungle cat waiting to pounce! Excellent participation, Roxy, A-fuckin-plus, if this piece of shit college gave those.”

“I thought that was a harder class?” he asks, frowning slightly, remembering Roxy having at least two or three breakdowns over a final essay, nearly going off the rails during reading period. As a result, he ended up spending half of his study time trying to balance the need to get his best friend in front of a laptop, writing _something_ and the competing priority of stabilizing his head to avoid an extremely feasible ‘aspirating liquor’ situation.

“Nah, it was really great. Big bright spot in the pile of shit that was last semester, though. Ugh. Want some wine? I got like three different boxes for three-times the class. Ooh, and I got some more lemon vodka, shit’s great.”

“Eh, gotta figure out how I’m going to approach this shitty project.”

“That’s just so dumb! Only the first two weeks and you’re already stressed out. I oughtta give your professor a piece of my mind. An angry one! Your teaching methodology is discouraging people from enjoying the arts, and you should feel bad! That’s theoretically what I would say.”

“Defending my honor once again. What would I do without you?”

“Languish. Wither away like a parched daisy.”

He laughs, kneading at his forehead through it, smiling up when Dirk is clearly staring at him in open concern.

“Okay,” he says, rolling out of the beanbag chair and towards his minifridge. “Could be a long night, but I’ve got an idea. Like, capital-I _idea_. You ready for this shit?”

“Born ready,” he says.

“What if I make my Dirk Strider-y-est face, and you draw me instead? Hear me out! I think there’s a compelling case to be made about, y’know, the nature of representative symbols, and the way we see our friends as an expression of our selves, and like, also I’d get to wear your shades, obviously, so that’d be tight as fuck!”

Before he can respond, Roxy is producing a bottle of club soda and a bottle of lemon-flavored vodka.

“Ugh, I’ve gotta stop buying this stuff! It tastes _exactly_ like lemonade. It’s dangerous, dude.”

“You, uh, sure about that?” he says slowly, himself not sure exactly what he’s talking about.

“Totes, the surest! Look, I can’t ask for a better fate than gazing impassively at that handsome face of yours for as long as it takes to sketch me, and I already mortifyingly know you, dude, whether you like it or not. Hell, unless you ask your boy Jakey, there’s no better eye candy than yours truly, and it’s totally within the parameters of your stupid assignment! Besides, I hate to see you all mopey about this stuff. Let’s do it.”

He flicks the top off the bottle with practiced ease, raises it as though to toast to the endeavor, and takes a drink directly from it.

Lately, it’s not like they’ve been spending less time in each others' company, but it’s been harder to pull things together. They’re both basically always working, much as that sucks, and Roxy’s got his shit going on, and he’s got… his own shit, honestly, he’s no one to tell him how to live, no matter how much he… used to do that, he’s really trying not to, he’s in therapy for fuck’s sake!

Gotta take advantage of the free campus mental health services while the getting’s good.

Roxy is immune to hints that he might consider … anything like that for himself. And that’s fine. It doesn’t make his chest any less warm with gratitude when they actually get together. He’s really the same Roxy. Practically less up-the-wall, really, since it’s senior year. They’d have to really fuck up to not graduate, now.

He’s still wound into a tight human ball of pure anxiety over the increasingly limited prospects of fucking up, but Roxy doesn’t seem to care. And he needs that, sometimes. It makes sense.

“Alright, I’m in,” he says. “Get ready to get photorealistically sort-of-me up in here, Rox. Side effects may include men throwing themselves at you in the streets, extreme swoleness, and uncontrollable diarrhea.”

Mixing a drink in his sparkly pink nalgene bottle, Roxy takes a break to snort in his general direction.

“I thought the diarrhea was just friend-proximity to you. Shit, dude, literally. _Can_ it get worse?”

“It can,” he says gravely, steeling himself and taking off his shades, thinking to draw him in the act of putting them on, watching carefully to capture the moment.

Obligingly, he puts them on slowly, like a bizarre reverse strip-show, and Dirk frowns at the sight.

“We don’t actually look too much alike.”

“That’s the point! Alienation of one’s self, its discovery in your loved ones! Jeez, Dirk, I took way too much Marxism class for you to be doubting me right now. This is art-y as fuck.”

“Right, my bad,” he says. “Give me a second.”

Digging around in his shoulder bag, he finds his sketchpad and a handful of pencils.

“You’re going to have to re-explain the significance of this a few more times,” he notes, wordlessly directing Roxy to cant his head into the overhead light, miming his own hands on an imaginary pair of glasses to prompt him to do the same.

“As many times as you want, babe.”

“Seduce me with modernist media theory.”

“God, I’m trying to!” he laughs, then falls silent, makes a game effort to reach down and grab his bottle of alcohol without shifting his face out of the light.

“Uh.”

“Psh, messing with ya, bud.”

“The day you stop messing with me, that’s when I’ll worry,” he says quickly, penciling in a rough outline, pausing at the way the set of Roxy’s mouth tightens for a second, an expression he’s pretty sure he’s never made. It passes quickly enough, and he resumes his work.

“Good, ‘cause my contract just got renewed and I turned down several real lucrative offers to keep dicking around with you!”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“I know,” he says, smiling wanly from under Dirk’s glasses. “Do I ever know.”

By the time he’s mostly done - admittedly, it’s a great piece, he feels better about it than he has for anything for this class in the two weeks since it started - Roxy is nodding off in his beanbag chair, snapping back into his pose and lolling into semi-unconsciousness intermittently.

“Dirk,” Roxy asks, slumping half-against him, half-into-his-bed, when he lets him know the sketch is done enough for him to sleep. “Why don’t we talk? We don’t ever talk anymore. About real stuff, I mean, did I… do something?”

“No. No, of course not.”

“‘Cause if I did -”

“You didn’t. Get some rest, okay?”

“Okay. Sorry to… to keep you so late. ‘S a pretty picture. Real arty. A million points to Gryffindor.”

“Thanks, Rox. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

He walks home in the dark in complete silence. Something feels heavy, but he’s not sure what.

....

It’s later than he meant to stay out. Sometimes he really gets into the zone, sitting down with a metaphorical stack of online job applications and a nitro cold brew at the local Starbucks. They really shouldn’t be allowed to stay open past eleven. It’s terrible for his cardiovascular health, not to mention his sleep schedule.

The late August evening is quiet and wetly chilly, for the most part. Like a grande nitro cold brew that’s been sitting beside his impromptu workstation for several hours too long, sweating a ring on the table, if he had to pick an analogy totally out of nowhere. Overripe blackberries are rotting on the thorny bushes along the bike trail. Even in the relatively pleasant ambiance of the evening, the smell carries.

He puts his head down and walks faster.

Earlier in the day, with the sun out, the path affords him a beautiful view of Seattle. But it’s not the early evening anymore. The cavern of the sky overhead is still just barely blue of black, and while some lights in the city across the bay still glimmer at this late hour, the horizon is mostly occupied by the jutting, alien structures of cranes suspended over their respective construction projects. It’s not an especially homey or familiar sight.

At least back in Houston it never got cold before fuckin’ November at the earliest. He pulls his thin jacket more tightly around his shoulders. The over-caffeination as much as the temperature makes him shiver. The bike path is sparsely lit, and the road it overlooks is nearly vacant. It feels later than it is, he decides. He hates this area. Fuck the suburbs, fuck the west coast, and fuck poorly considered public infrastructure projects.

Especially fuck Dave for running off to Reed, leaving him with the world’s weirdest case of older-brother-legal-guardian empty nest syndrome. And fuck _him_, fuck his own idiot self, for packing up, selling the apartment, and moving across the country without a plan other than ‘be a reasonable drive away when Dave inevitably needs his help’. 

Which has not happened yet, but the year is young.

He sighs, feeling immensely put-upon for absolutely no rational reason, and picks up the pace. He’s getting kind of a headache, too, the sort that’s got nothing to do with slamming back overcaffeinated beverages and staring at a screen for four hours straight. That’s not even an eighth of his unbroken-screen-staring record. Amateur hour. He’s getting soft out here. Directionless.

Part of it has to be all this time on his own. Realizing he built his adult life around Dave, and it’s hollow without him in it. Reluctance to search for something Dave-shaped, since the fucker isn’t _dead_, he’s just… out there, alone, where anything could happen. Dealing with his shit alone for the first time _ever_.

It’s the same for Dirk, obviously, but it hurts to admit it. It hurts to think he might have already served his purpose in Dave’s life, that he’ll be better off without him, now. Or worse, that he did a shit job and now his little brother is off suffering because he couldn’t be everything he needed. Is this caffeine-fueled anxiety or just _anxiety_?

He’s almost grateful when something out of the ordinary forces him to a halt in the middle of the pitch-dark bike path. An odd grouping of people. Voices atonal, several low, one clearly panicked. 

In an instant, he’s out of his own head and assessing the situation. Someone is hurt. Or someone is under threat. He’s alone, a mile out from Starbucks, a mile away from home, a few hundred feet from the nearest streetlamp, a steep and thorny precipice separating him and the path from the street below.

Drawing nearer, keeping his pace even and businesslike, as though he’s not looking for trouble, he can make out at least three figures. At least three, one of which is presumably not hostile.

There’s a spring-loaded microtech blade in his pocket. Illegal in Seattle, nowhere near impossible to obtain. Three on one. With any luck, he’s misreading what he’s seeing. Someone’s hurt, someone’s already calling in paramedics, that’s where the story ends. A stimulant-fueled hallucination, best resolved with a tip of the hat and a hurried walk home to get some fuckin’ sleep.

He’s got something of a sixth sense for this sort of thing, though. He’s gotten into his fair share of stupid bullshit, and he’s gotten Dave out of his own more times than he’d care to count, or think about, now that the mouthy piece of work (he loves that mouthy piece of work) is off on his own. It’s not a mistake. His heartbeat is pounding in his ears.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he calls, when he’s about a stone’s throw away. “Strange choice of setting for a midnight rendezvous, isn’t it?”

Distance is his friend, at the moment. There’s nowhere easy to run from this particular location. A great place for an ambush, on a moonless night. But if he wants to avoid anything coming to blows, he has to give anyone involved enough room to make a break for it. Adrenaline, he knows, makes people stupid, so he leaves an obvious opening in the path, shifting far to the right, his side flush with the dropoff down to the road.

Someone does run, almost immediately, though away from him. He’s close enough to hear their ragged breathing. Two figures turn to face him, now, taller and broader, one with a hat obfuscating his face, the other in a full-on balaclava, _christ_. Like they’re cosplaying a couple of tough guys. It’s easier to hold his ground, thinking that, regardless of how big they are.

“You stupid or something?” one of them growls.

He shrugs.

“Yeah. Honestly, some days I think you’re probably right.”

“Lookin’ for trouble, then?”

“Not really. Just enjoying the night air, y’know.”

They seem to be looking him up and down appraisingly, as much as he can make out just what the hell they’re doing in the dark. He doesn’t exactly radiate ‘please fuck with me’ energy - he’s pretty tall, young, dressed practically, and he really isn’t looking for trouble, much. His laptop is in a carrying case over his shoulder, but it’s an old model, hardly worth the effort to steal it, and he’s got no more than a few bucks on his person. Beyond that, just the knife, though he’s pointedly not holding himself as though he’s armed.

It’s a half-second from being in his hand, but it’d be better if it didn’t have to be. Very, very illegal in Seattle. Not something he wants interfering with his job search. They’re going to have to draw first, if anyone’s going to be pulling any kind of anything.

“Came from a great pub down that way,” he lies. “Killer IPAs, if you’re looking for a good time.”

“Huh,” one says, nudging the other. “Thanks.”

They make as though to pass the way he came, and he steps even further out of the way, nodding politely. Right up until one makes to shoulder-check him down the slope.

Motherfucker.

He sees it coming, just barely in the low light, and catches the guy by the shoulder as he pivots, using his own momentum to practically throw him down. The rotten-blackberries smell is especially strong, here. His fall is broken by a massive bush, judging by the pained cry as the other guy rushes him head-on, a little more careful than the last.

Not the sort of trick that works twice.

He puts a fist into his solar plexus - he’s got enough scars on his knuckles not to aim for the face first - and doesn’t stop to watch the results. He runs. When it comes down to it, he’d really rather get the fuck out before someone starts asking about his illegal weapon choices.

Neither of them seems especially eager to follow. Thank fuck, since he’s too overcaffeinated to run for long, and he slows to a jog after thirty seconds, max. Fuck. Sometimes he regrets his approach to fitness, which is, formally, fuck cardio.

Fuck cardio indeed.

At least he’s slowed down when he catches up with - fuck. He never got a good look at the person the two dudes were fucking with, but he’s almost sure, doubly so when they pass distantly through the wan orange light of a streetlamp, glancing back nervously, stiffening when they see him. They start as though about to run, then sag against the lamppost.

He tries not to catch up, to give them space, to - it’s not like he wants to corner them like an animal, not after whatever just went down. But they’re sobbing as he passes, audibly even with eight feet between them.

Looking around, still with no sign of pursuers, he puts his hands up, as non-threateningly as he can manage.

“Hey,” he says. “I - it’s okay. Are you hurt? Do you need me to call someone?”

“They took my phone,” the person says hollowly, their face still hidden in shadow, ducked low and out of the light.

“Here. Use mine. Anything you need. I got nowhere to be.”

“Thank you,” they choke. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I should have been more careful, I can’t believe I just…”

“Don’t apologize. It’s fine. You’re safe. That’s what matters.”

The would-be victim look up at him with eyes that glimmer with tears.

Brownblackredgreenblue_amber_.

“I… don’t want to go home alone,” theyheshe_you_ murmur.

“No problem. I live nearby, if you - I can set you up, I’ll take the couch, it’s not a problem.”

“But I couldn’t impose!”

“It wouldn’t be an imposition. It’s never an imposition, when someone needs your help,” he says gravely, which feels like a strange thing to say, even for him, but he can’t put his finger on why.

They’re strikingly beautiful in the lamplight. No features. Smooth and blank and nothing but eyes that mirror his own in perfect synchrony. They’re him. They’re you. You smile back.

“I’m a stranger,” they whisper. “Someone should have told me not to talk to strangers. And now I guess I’ve got to warn you.”

“Tell me your name. We won’t be strangers anymore.”

As they draw closer, their features resolve into something more than an intimation of amber eyes. A sharp nose, stark cheekbones, a hard-lined but welcoming mouth, a - you draw closer. He draws closer to you. You draw closer to him. He fits you perfectly. You have never been anyone but You. It’s a cold night, and You are so fragile, so helpless, so achingly reminiscent of but entirely different from the brother he misses so much. Eyes wide, You smile shyly with Your mouth, Your eyes obscured behind Your angular shades. Your fantasy, Your dream, everything You want from him.

“My name,” You says, teetering slightly on Your feet, tremulous with the trauma of the evening, gazing up into his shaded eyes. “Is Yourname.”

“Yourname,” he says softly. “That’s the most beautiful name I’ve ever heard.”

....

The lobby of the little movie theater is almost empty. That’s not unexpected; it’s early Tuesday afternoon, grey and drizzly and oddly cold in a way that seeps into the building, a note of ozone and sweet decay behind the thick pall of buttered popcorn.

“You want anything?” he asks Rose, as she searches for cash.

“Nachos. Extra cheese, if you can make that happen.”

“Got it,” he says, heading over to the snack counter, but not before he clearly observes the disaffected teenager at the checkout counter note the package of THC-infused gummies in Rose’s purse, sigh, and ignore them in favor of handing her two tickets to Avengers: Endgame.

Due to the total absence of other guests, he’s able to skillfully finagle the snack foods to her specifications, and quickly, besides. There’s a science to it all. He and Rose have been coming to this dump for weekday matinees since they both wound up in a fucked-up suburb of Orlando after graduation, him at a virtual reality hardware developer, her taking a year off to accept a laboratory position and try to write a book prior to attempting grad school. Due to necessity as much as sheer density of shit in common, they’ve become close friends remarkably quickly. An auspicious trajectory for two people initially united by ‘being friends with Roxy’ and nothing else.

It’s nice, and different, having someone like her to shoot the shit with. He misses his other college friends, but it’s eased, marginally, by their ritual of coordinating their irregular days off and getting high as hell while skewering shitty movies in late-release. Only a dollar fifty a ticket. Best entertainment in town.

He passes her the nachos and follows her into the theater. There’s no one at the weird little movie-theater-ticket-pulpit; the two teenagers back at the cash register, probably high schoolers fresh out of the day’s classes, are the only staff around. This is promising.

As he’d hoped, the theater itself is dead empty. Rose steers him to the middle, then pulls a pair of beach towels out of her enormous shoulder bag and covers two seats. God, he loves Rose. He would forget this part every time, and it’s pretty clear nothing in this building has been cleaned since probably before he was born.

“Real germophobe hours,” he says, as he settles gratefully on a cheap drugstore effigy of the rat from Ratatouille.

“Don’t be a bitch. You appreciate it.”

As the local advertisements play through - one extolling the virtues of the pizza place next door, once soliciting teens looking for employment in the fast-paced film industry to apply for work at the front desk - she passes him his own packet of gummies, and he opens the thing, pours them all in his mouth, chews for a few seconds, and swallows with a grimace.

“Something you want to talk about, Strider?”

“No,” he says.

“Your consumption habits say otherwise.”

“You’re not my therapist,” he insists.

“No one’s your therapist. You haven’t attended a therapy session in months.”

“This is why I don’t tell you anything. You always bring your little ‘facts’ and ‘observations’ up at extremely inconvenient moments to guilt me into doing shit. I hate doing shit.”

“I’m aware.” She pats his arm and offers him a nacho, which he eats from her hand like a retired racehorse taking an apple slice from a precocious tween girl with a riding competition to win in order to save her town library. “Unfortunately, as the kids say, ‘someone’s gotta do it’.”

“At least let me be higher before we get to the feelings jam portion of this unbearably shitty movie.”

Trailers begin to roll for a variety of movies released several weeks prior, and he gestures vaguely at the screen, as though to indicate the importance of his watching the latest summation of a Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson blockbuster. This one has Jason Statham in it. That’s new.

“Fine, as you like it,” Rose sighs, nearly spilling cheese on herself and cursing softly as she digs around in her hugeass purse to find a wetnap and clean nacho goo off the armrest. “Let’s discuss a neutral topic, then. Have you heard from Roxy, lately?”

He shrugs.

“Not since he started at fuckin’... Rainforest, I think? One of those nightmare corporations. I hope they haven’t ground him and his obnoxious Anti Tech Bro Idealism to dust yet.”

“Then we’re in the same boat in that regard.”

There’s a pregnant silence as they mutually contemplate an absent friend. He’s not exactly envious of Roxy - that’s not the right word. Ever since graduation, though, it’s felt as though they’ve been drifting apart, which is unavoidable when they live two thousand miles apart and have to do adult shit like paying rent and regularly showing up for work. It’s oddly crushing, though, how quickly their worlds are starting to look different.

Weekly bad movies are just about all he looks forward to anymore, even in the context of his job, which isn’t too shitty at all. He’s doing work that he likes doing. He just wonders where the fuck any of this is going, what could concievably come next for him. It feels like he’s treading water and everyone else is fucking Michael Phelps up in this swimming pool.

It’s just stupid.

“I had a Tinder date two nights ago,” Rose says, taking a long drink from a water bottle she smuggled in.

“Thank god. Maybe getting laid will finally mellow you out a bit.”

He doesn’t have to be able to see her to register the eyeroll she executes in response.

“Some people would ask, ‘how did it go’, Dirk.”

“I’ve never been one for trite formalities.”

“It was fine. I _did_ get laid, as a matter of fact, you absolute ass. She was perfectly decent. A psych grad student at UCF.”

“Nice, right in your wheelhouse. Did you seduce her with psychobabble?”

“I certainly tried,” she sighs.

“Hence the damnation with faint praise, I would imagine. ‘Perfectly decent’, Rose? If you want to unpack every slip of the tongue we make, that’s a pretty substantial place to start.”

“Ugh. Turnabout is fair play, isn’t it.”

“Fairest fuckin’ play there is.”

“Fine. You’re right. It felt - well, as it always does. Hollow, in the worst way. With a side effect of making me feel like an arrogant _shitheel_ for not… I don’t know. I don’t know why I keep trying. Looking for someone who’ll understand me, or at least exhibit any sign of attempting to do so. I sometimes feel very lonely out here.” She laughs. “Surely you wouldn’t know what that’s like.”

“Oh, surely,” he agrees, nudging her with his shoulder. “Sh. Movie’s starting. This is important. I hear Spiderman’s dead or some shit.”

“We’ve both already seen this movie, and are faced with a decision: actually _watch_ a Marvel movie, or discuss our experiences and emotions.”

“I’m definitely a Tony Stark. Just out of all of these douchebags, that’s the one I am. Look at that smug bastard, with his robots and shit. I could have robots, if I wanted to.”

“Son of a bitch,” she sighs, and empties her own packet of gummies into her mouth. “If you can’t beat them…”

“You’re…” he frowns at her. “You’re the Hulk. The version where he’s… you know, he wears the lab coat.”

“There is no universe in which that comparison makes any sense. I am not the Hulk, nor am I humoring you and participating in this conversation.”

“No, you’re right. You’re clearly Tilda Swinton.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said what I said.”

“You’re not high, Dirk, you’re pretending to be high to avoid talking about either of our problems, because the striking similarity of our circumstances and sense of alienation despite having attained the appurtenances of success makes you uncomfortable. Because, I’m starting to believe, you’re terrified of the idea that someone might understand you, in part because you recognize that you are suffering and you fear that your doing so has either caused suffering for someone else, or will intensify it, should you find that your experiences are in any way similar. In part because the recognition of your pain in someone else makes it more real to you than your own self-knowledge. Am I incorrect?”

“Shaved-head Tilda Swinton in culturally appropriative pajamas, definitely.”

“For fuck’s sake, open your eyes. I’m clearly gay Gamora.”

“This had better not be your segue into accusing me of being Thanos, because characterizing me as a well-intentioned intergalactic terrorist with vaguely defined omnicidal ambitions is one thing, but casting me as your in-universe shitty dad, dude, that’s a whole different ballgame. I’ve osmotically absorbed enough bastardized-Freudian bullshit from your monologues to call that for what it is: pro-jec-tion. Let’s talk about where you got that from. Recline, why don’t you, on my metaphysical leather daybed-slash-couch, observe my figurative therapist-notepad open and at the ready, and tell me about your relationship with your father.”

“Are you certain that you’re ready for that?” she asks, her voice eerily atonal, her countenance gone blank.

He blinks.

_You_ blink.

For a second, you chase the memory of something familiar in her gaze. She holds steady before the intensity of your scrutiny. Is it her? Are you speaking with her? For real?

“Fine, Dr. Strider, I suppose we’ll go there. Untreated personality disorder and major depression, in my professional opinion, killed himself before I was born. Not a shitty dad, an absent one. Conspicuously truant at our graduation, you might have noticed, on account of the not being alive.”

Oh. So not… you’re not there yet.

You swallow the knot in your… his… throat. Relax your grip. Fade back into him.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he says, wincing.

“Don’t be, I’m going to use that interaction as potent fodder for emotional extortion to force you to open up periodically for the foreseeable future. I never met the man. How could I have issues with someone I never had the chance to know?”

“I don’t know. Some people still manage.”

“Surely, Dirk, you’ve known me long enough to be aware that I hardly qualify as _some people_.”

“Good lord, how’d the psychologist Tinderella shut you up long enough to fuck you without going into pretension-induced anaphylaxis?”

Rose responds with a fairly graphic peace-sign-related gesture and a saucy wink, and he groans exaggeratedly and steals another nacho.

“And you say _I’m_ awful,” he says accusingly, as Thor beheads Thanos onscreen.

“I thought my line was ‘_we’re_ awful’.”

“Oh. Then you’re completely right.”

She puts her head on his shoulder and offers him the nachos in earnest.

“I usually am.”

....

Dirk is dead, and his headless body hangs suspended by one bound leg from the vaulted ceiling of a place that used to be called the Medium. His complexion is ashen and bloodless, to the jaw, where the rest of him has been excised with mechanical precision. AR is never anything less than precise. His torment never falls short of artistic perfection.

When they come upon it, the four of them, Roxy loses the color in his cheeks, turns to dry-heave. Even after all this time, it still rattles him, which is why AR does it. He never does anything without statistical certainty in its efficacy.

Dirk - the alive Dirk, the one gazing up at his headless self, stone-faced and unreactive - should know this better than anyone. He built him, once upon a time, in a different world.

He leans in to put his hand on Roxy’s shoulder, only to find that he’s phased out of reach, flickered into somewhere or something else, if this is even him. AR delights in these kinds of simple deceits, the sort they have to buy for him to continue purveying such grim reimaginations of reality. Oddly punitive. Roxy can’t cling to a static image of himself for long, turns fuzzy at the edges or goes somewhere out of reach, always when a comforting hand would be most needed.

Their captor has no need to explain himself, but he often does, at length, using Dirk’s voice.

And he hates them. He hates them ardently, passionately. Too much to kill them. Enough to remind them periodically that he can.

“What is it? Why’ve we stopped?” Jake asks, as he often does, his vision obscured by the flashing skulltop fused with his head.

“Another dead Dirk,” Roxy says quietly, barely audible, as though whispered from somewhere far away.

He keeps count. This is the nine-hundred and ninety-second time AR has brought them face to face with his corpse. Not the most or least inspired, either, he finds. Always headless. That must mean something.

It’s their hundred and thirty-fourth year in the confines of the supercomputer.

Dirk turns away from the corpse and continues on their path.

There is nothing else to do.

-

Roxy, after a time, becomes possessed of the idea that there are provisions to be found in the distant ice caverns. Canned goods, he says, and Dirk has a laugh about it, only to find that no one else seems quite so quick to dismiss him. Jake is a little dubious, but they’ve long since given up on agonizing over the logistics of what AR whispers. It’s true, or it’s not. And they’re starving either way.

“Toss it all, I say we go for it,” Jake finally says. “As far as I’m concerned, it might as well be some cruel jape, but if we don’t bite the lure, who’s to say it won’t be something worse?”

Who indeed? He yields to the consensus of the group. Here or there, in a distant set of ice caverns, mired in noxious swamps or boiling beneath a simulated sun in an endless desert, they suffer, and AR watches and laughs and taunts and whispers. There isn’t a rhyme or reason to any of it, not a moral to the story, not a hair’s-breadth of ground to be gained or dignity to be preserved. He has his fun. They take it.

He’s preoccupied with time, and he makes certain that the concept is never far from their thoughts, too. It’s April thirteenth. Any of them could voice aloud the hour, minute, second, but they don’t. It dogs them with every heartbeat, every breath. The passage of time is his most potent weapon.

If not for that, the torment might eventually blur together. But it never does. Each horror is accordingly fresh, cuts deep, heals slow, around a thousand other such cuts.

AR is as thorough and ruthless as the person he was when he created him.

If the others truly understand where he came from, why it’s Dirk’s corpse perennially on display, they charitably don’t mention it. They loved each other, once. What has survived well over a century of ceaseless torment can no longer really be characterized as love. It’s camaraderie in its deepest sense, tempered by distrust and unease. He strikes at them indiscriminately, it seems, until the moment that it no longer seems that way. Dirk, after all, still has his form, relatively unchanged.

Jane might have the worst of it, his sick experiments with the limits of embodied humanity. Jake’s vision may be permanently obscured by his skulltop, but she is warped nearly beyond recognition. Not for any reason he can discern. Her fingers have long been spindled into purple-tinged spines, webbing stranded between them, gills opened up from her throat to her shoulder, turning her breath to helpless gasps.

Her teeth fell out, one by one, a few years back, and grew in needle-sharp and sharklike. That was around the time she lost it. Lucky her. Jane, who was supposed to be their leader, contorted into a misshapen effigy of herself, barely coherent. Jake, blinded by his skulltop, perennially forgetting about her disfigurement, attempting to comfort her, cutting his hands on the spines running up and down her back.

They wind their way through fire-scarred wreckage, slow-moving rivers choked with buzzing insects and slime, biblical plagues and eerily silent forests, in which all of the towering trees are long since dead. Fields of bones, lakes of fire, scalding-hot acid rain and bitterly cold tundras, barren and windswept.

When their hunger grows unsurvivable, he lets them crack open the skeletons for marrow. Jane is the only one still strong enough to do so, but with the aid of her teeth, they manage. It’s disgusting. He’s never eaten anything so quickly before.

Jake is dragged away one afternoon by an overgrown crocodile, Roxy swallowed by a sinkhole, leaving him and Jane to walk more or less in silence, her breathing labored, his kept quiet in his chest, not wanting to provoke any further punishment. It’s a habit of AR’s, taking a few of them away to suffer individually, hauling them off for some personalized terror.

Within a few days, Jake falls back into step behind them, new scars running down his shoulders where the beast took him. Roxy reappears, though he walks with a pained limp. A souvenir. It still twists his stomach, but there’s a regularity to it. Dirk’s turn will roll around on occasion, just like any of them. The machine’s whims are its own, and no one is safe from them.

It thinks like he does. He recognizes that, and wonders if anyone else does. If anyone has caught onto it. If so, it would have to be Roxy, still of sound mind and not yet blinded by the machine. But Roxy is so far out of his reach.

Everything is so unreachably far away. At times, light from the surface world filters in tantalizingly from overhead. There’s nothing up there but a different kind of torture, a different kind of agonizing death. They stopped trying to reach it decades ago. It made him even angrier, somehow. Even underneath the skulltop, Jake’s eyes are still liquified pools of useless flesh, after their last attempt. It’s better not to look up.

He looks up anyway. The caverns are still miles in the distance, at least a week’s walk through the treacherous terrain.

AR laughs.

He wonders if the machine knows what he’s thinking. If he knows that he still has a flicker of hope somewhere in his chest, tempered by the constant fear.

Whether he’ll die for it someday.

-

They move slowly, hindered as much by AR’s machinations as by the limitations of their own human pace.

Through turbulent, oil-slick oceans.

Through unbearably bright and barren wastelands.

Through tenuous footholds in a sea of lava.

Through ruins choked with noxious fumes.

Through stacks of corpses, corded like firewood.

Through, finally, an icy mountain pass, torn apart by blistering winds, steep and hazardous. When they reach the cavern, it’s more than merely the long-sought promised land. It is, at last, a small moment of relief from torment. Beautiful, really, the stark blue-white walls smooth and mirrored, the stalactites hanging overhead long and daggerlike, frozen solid, whisper-quiet.

A thick layer of snow underfoot, not yet crushed by human weight, muffles any noise in the cavern. Even the howling of the wind abates, and Roxy lifts his head, and Jane’s gills flutter despite the cold as she trills with excitement.

They’ve been denied this for so long. They’re all so hungry. He began to toy with that, the hunger, back in the land of tombs and krypton. Even when he offered them the opportunities to sate it, now, their full stomachs - marrow, moss, squirming little fiddler crabs mired in oil, anything - never relieved the cramping, twisting agony. The hunger never left them. It coiled in them, burned at their abdomens.

Dirk spots the mountain of canned goods first, Jane almost immediately afterwards. The changes AR had made to her allow her to leap ahead easily, even as the rest of them are mired in the snow, flounder after her, sharing in her ebullient shouts, victory in sight.

Almost.

By the time they reach the pile, the deceit is clear.

AR has left them nothing with which to open the cans.

Jane sobs, her tooth snapping off against the surface of the can, another behind it waiting to take its place, but blood nonetheless filling her mouth from the loss. She screams, a hollow but fearsome noise that reverberates through the icy cavern, flares her fuschia gills and sets the pinkish-grey spines running down her back upright, and with that terrible noise she seems to lose whatever was tethering her to herself, smashing the can against the slick bluish wall, pulverizing the ice bank but not so much as scratching the metal surface.

“Let me, Janey,” Jake offers, and she rounds on him and slams the battered can into the side of his face with bone-splintering force, the skulltop lodged around his ears barely sparing him a quick death.

He hits the ground hard nonetheless, bleeding from his temple, stunned, but alive, even as Jane straddles him in the hard-packed snow and beats him, again and again, with the can of fucking peaches, her claws scrabbling at the paper as she does so but unable to penetrate the aluminum.

“Stop it!” Roxy cries. “Stop it, oh god, Dirk, do something! She’s going to kill him!”

Have any of them really died, yet? Certainly, AR has leveraged that fear before, stealing Roxy in an avalanche or dragging Jake away in a swarm of sewer rats, only to spit them back out into this torture dimension hours later. They no longer cry when it happens. Death is cheap, here, at least when AR does it.

But he isn’t omnipotent. He isn’t. Dirk know that. He’s been pushing the boundaries, and he’s seen Roxy doing it too, when he has the opportunity, killing a rat or a rabid dog to slake his hunger, judging how long it takes AR to spirit the corpse away like the grapes of fuckin’ Tantalus. It isn’t instant. The creatures can die. They don’t spring back to life, they merely vanish through the boundaries of constructed existence.

And that was with their bare hands. The icicles, set loose from the ceiling as Jane-that-isn’t-Jane wrestles with the task of crushing Jake’s skull through the bound-on skulltop, its eyes still flickering grotesquely even as a gout of blood wets his lips, litter the snow-coated ground, most intact. Weapons. How long has it been since he’s held a weapon?

It takes only an instant.

He picks up an icicle, says a silent apology for the person Jane was, before she was what AR made her, and drives it through her from behind, a canted-up angle from just below her ribcage, sliding in too easily, with a sound that he will never forget. Like meat. He’s so hungry. He’s so hungry. But he doesn’t have time for this. He has no time. Only this instant.

Roxy has caught on, though, picks up his own icicle, and puts it through Jake’s chest. Tears are streaming down his face when he looks up from the grisly task.

All in an instant.

He turns his own weapon on himself, as best he can. It’s slick in his hands, clumsy, not an edged weapon, too long and unwieldy for this. But he has to stop this, and to stop this, he has to die. Maybe it’s pure speculation. Maybe it’s unimaginably stupid. But AR used to be him, is still bound to him, as best he knows. If he can kill himself, he might just be able to spare Roxy. He might be able to be free.

But it’s not enough. He has no time to do the job right. Just frost-numbed hands and a fucking icicle. He tries anyway, plunges it into his own stomach, the pain bringing him to his knees, but it’s not a killing blow.

“Roxy, you have to do it,” he chokes. “I’m so sorry, Roxy, please, please, finish it, please, Roxy, _Roxy_, do it, quick-!”

An icicle suspended overhead dislodges and falls as Roxy stands transfixed, watching blood soak through Dirk’s shirt. It’s one of the massive ones, dagger-sharp, and what it does to his chest doesn’t bear describing. It doesn’t. He can’t describe it. He can only sob, reaching for the shard of ice still embedded in his own stomach, to twist, to pull it out and bleed freely, to do something, something, he has to do something.

It’s over.

All in an instant.

“Not very sportsmanly of you, Dirk,” AR whispers from overhead, as his arms disintegrate around the makeshift weapon and his mouth seals closed before the strangled cry can escape it. “What do we in the business call this sort of thing? Rage-quitting? I’m only pulling your leg, I know the term with utter certainty. But I’m ashamed to say that I expected better of you. It’s possible that I miscalculated your instincts for the preservation of your own life. Or simply your affection for these walking biological hazards.”

He can’t respond, but if he could, he would still be fighting, for all the good it would do him. Roxy. He didn’t have to die. If Roxy could have _killed him_, if he hadn’t been too fucking good to live, shit.

“I find that your inability to speak improves the quality of my enjoyment of our discussions by a factor of several hundred.”

There’s no surprise in that. 

But he figured that AR would have to tire eventually of this part of his game, and on that count, he was wrong. His friends are never returned to him. Never moved. Never buried. They lay frozen in the cavern where they fell until he decides to be done with them, and word of the decision to do so never enters his diatribes. Even their images are never summoned up to torment him.

Perhaps AR is on to something. It sears at him enough, clinging to the memory of Roxy’s face. Knowing that he could have saved him, if no one else. If he only would have died. Oh, if only he could die. He would settle for remembering, but even that begins to fail him quickly. His mind and his body are not his own. There is no space for reminiscence in a life of torment.

If he thought AR hated him before, his fury now makes that seem laughable.

By the time he’s done with Dirk, he’s unrecognizable.

To ensure, perhaps, that he never succeeds at the endeavor torn from his grasp before, he’s hardened his skin to impenetrable and unyielding steel. His eyes, sunken into a warped effigy of his face, are no more than two gleaming chips of amber light. The rest of him is perfectly smooth, in the way of a machine. Cold and untouched and untouchable. Slowed like a fly caught in molasses at AR’s will. No, there will be no escape for him.

He would smile, though, still. Enough time has passed - millennia, seconds, he hardly knows - that all he remembers of Roxy was that, pinned there like an insect on a specimen board, he was whole and real and at peace, for one last instant. He must believe that they’re all safe, now, sheltered by death from the horrors of existence. His own existence is untenable without that certainty.

He would smile, but below his ever-open eyes, subjected relentlessly to fresh horrors as AR can construct them, and he can construct horrors _brilliantly_, he _can_… below them is a chrome-coated expanse of nothing. Not headless, but devoid of anything that would make a head a useful thing to possess.

Still, he staggers forward, through the labyrinth, on spindly legs of steel, wholly the product of AR’s ingenuity, now, which has an awful sort of symmetry to it, in this hell he created. In this hell where he will never die, only stumble through a divine punishment for eternity, the last person on earth, no longer anything but the mockery of a man.

He finds himself, at length, in a room stacked with thousands of cans, with labels promising all matter of contents, quite by accident. With the hydraulic pressure of his metal hands, he crushes a disc-shaped can to nothing. Mangled peaches ooze out where his grip digs in.

While he does not react, can’t react, AR laughs overhead, and twists his grip on the _idea_ of hunger, in a body that cannot hunger, cannot sicken, cannot die. Without any way to satiate it, powerful though his hands have become, like this, Dirk hungers, and the cans glisten, and AR’s hollow laughter echoes.

It would be a luxury to be allowed to scream, to cry, to react in any way.

But he has no mouth, and he must -

_Oh, fuck off, really? Really?_

....

“Once upon a time, a king and queen, whose names have long been forgotten, lifted up their hands to a greater power. For all that their kingdom had prospered, for all their successes in the realms of politics and science and art, they were unable to conceive a child.

No voice spoke back, and no hand reached down to bless or smite them, but within a year, the queen bore a prince, and there was much rejoicing in their land.

But the little prince was frail and sickened easily. The world beyond the doors of the room in which he had been born was too bright, too loud, and he weakened with each passing day, though he never cried. His parents grew worried, and called in, first, the physicians of the great realm. None of the doctors, learned though they were, could find what ailed the boy. And he grew steadily weaker as the days passed with curtains drawn and doors closed. They called in, then, the realm’s foremost in belief and religious doctrine. No matter how they puzzled, consulting texts, each other, the parents, and the boy in equal measure, none of the faith leaders could offer an explanation for his symptoms. And weeks stretched into months, and the boy no longer had the strength to lift his head from his pillow.

Finally, in desperation, they called for the aid of a fairy who was known to live far outside the kingdom’s reaches. Day after day, night after night, riders scoured the countryside in search of her home, which was as much the stuff of legend as of known fact. She was not the sort of fairy that much appreciated being spirited away from home for matters of a single fate, and she made herself difficult to find.

The boy was on death’s door when they brought her to the castle, the draperies blackened in preemptive mourning, the fires of the hearth roaring in a last attempt to still the tremors of the prince’s fragile body.

No sooner had she entered the sickroom than the fairy turned to the desperate monarchs, her smile stretching eerily from one tangent of her jaw to the other.

The prince, she told them, had been born separated from his soul. So long as he was kept apart from it, he would weaken and sicken further until death claimed his hollow corpse. It was only by virtue of the care of the physicians and holy people and the love of his parents that he had clung to life for so long.

Of course, they beseeched her to offer some form of remedy, some way this gruesome fate could be prevented. The little prince was as lovely as he was delicate, and he had aged, at this point, into a fine young boy, for all he could not survive outside of his insular pile of blankets. Surely, something could be done.

She pointed, then, to the grand mirror that hung across from the prince’s sickbed.

Should they truly desire his life over his death, at any cost, they would only have to shatter the mirror that had trapped his soul at birth. He would live, then, his soul returned to his body, a complete entity, capable of walking in the world as well as anyone. His fate, though, she warned them, would be worse than death. But she could not tell them why. Only that a soul gestated in solitude, behind cold glass, becomes a terrible thing, though no less a soul for it.

The choice was left to the prince.

As young as he was, as isolated as he had been since the moment of his birth, he asked that he be allowed his soul, regardless of the penalty. He wanted to see the things that he had only read about in storybooks, to meet the subjects of whose adoration he had been assured, to sit beside his mother when she ruled on matters of justice and to ride with his father to meet with their countrymen.

He wanted to feel the sun, to look upon a landscape other than the roiling sea outside his window. He wanted to be whole.

At any cost, truly? the fairy asked.

At any cost.

She struck the mirror once with a closed fist, and it shattered into a million jagged pieces, blown out with the force of a canon blast and a burst of light. The king and queen, when they had ceased sheltering each other, looked up to find their son bleeding from a thousand cuts, but wide-eyed and alert, sitting up unaided, his arms stilled of their persistent shake.

The fairy was gone.

He plucked the splinters from his own skin, and from there on, a healthier child had never been seen in the kingdom. The prince grew rapidly to match his age, gained strength and skill in combat, excelled in matters of sportsmanship and intellect alike.

But something about him had changed most horribly. Before he never cried, no matter his pain and sorrow; now he never smiled, no matter the joy and abundance of his circumstances. Where previously the consoling touch of his parents had been his only comfort, now he shunned their hands on his shoulder and their kisses to the top of his head, and avoided their company, save for matters of royal business.

They were proud of him, though, grateful for the preservation of his life and for his hardy constitution, for what seemed to be at least _some_ kind of delight in his own existence, in contrast with the fairy’s warning, and even for his interest in the affairs of the government. But unbecoming rumors of his conduct began to swirl in the castle and spread to the surrounding towns and villages, and soon they found themselves afraid of their own son, who had grown so strong and so cold-hearted so quickly and seemingly without reason.

Because they could not bring themselves to mete out the merited punishment to the son who had once been so weak and kind and precious to them, they found themselves with no choice but to lock him away, once again, in his quarters. And he beat himself bloody against the door, demanding to be set free from what had once been his hated prison.

The inhabitants of the castle who were not his blood relatives, though, had little sympathy for the source of years of terror and capricious cruelty, and in time, he realized as none came to help him, no matter how he plead, that he had worn out any good will that he had ever gained. That the greatest favor the monarchs could offer him was his life; that, for his crimes, any other man would have been put to death long ago.

Realizing this, he cursed the fairy who had first liberated him from his infirmity, and he cursed his parents for having bore him, and he cursed nothing more than he cursed his fate, that he had been born broken and, in being mended, had been rendered even further so, beyond hope of fixing.

He stared for long hours out at the sea, and waited to be punished. If not by his noble parents, by some child or parent or sibling of a victim, for the consequences of his own malice to claim his life. Yet each day, three meals appeared through a slot in his door, and each day when he returned the dishes to their place, they were spirited away, and never laced with poison nor punctuated by a dagger pressed through the opening.

Eventually, he found himself gazing into a remnant of the enormous looking-glass, looking back at all he had become, and he came to the conclusion, long fomenting, that he hated none so much as he hated himself and all that he had done. He hated the choice that he had made - the only choice he had ever really made, to live at such a high and terrible cost to so many people.

He blinked, and his reflection shifted to an image of the fairy who had visited him so many years ago. Her smile was placid, not vindictive, but it chilled him nonetheless.

Have you suffered enough at your own hand? the fairy asked him, with a voice that came more from somewhere inside him than from the mirror.

Yes. He had to admit, he had.

Then take this last shard from the mirror, she said. Cut out your own heart, and you will be free of it.

He thought that seemed excessively complicated as a means to take his life, but was aware that flippancy had never brought him anything especially good before, and resolved to do as she said.

Drawing the last jagged piece of glass from where it was lodged in the frame, he plunged it into his chest, more easily than he had expected, and dug past muscle and bone to pull his heart free from its lodging. The pain was exquisite. No less than he deserved. Once the organ was in his hand, though, he found, peculiarly, that he was not dead. His heart continued to beat, and from it protruded the last of the splinters that had assailed him when first the mirror shattered.

With each wet pulse, the silvery splinter moved with it.

In wonder, he gripped it and attempted to pull it free. But it was impossible; if the mirror-glass were removed, he would surely hemorrhage and die, in truth this time. He knew this with a certainty that was something approaching divine.

The dilemma transfixed him for some time. For the defect of his heart surely absolved him from what he had done. He could remove it and exsanguinate on the chamber floor as his parents’ beloved son, the prince they had always wished for and that the kingdom deserved, one physically unmarred by the consequences of the mirror’s curse.

And yet, he thought of how it had hurt him to take his heart from his chest, and he knew his pain would be nothing to that of his parents, who loved him despite everything, should they find him dead by his own hand. He ached for not having considered that the first time, for now, with his heart in his hand and not in his chest, he could feel for others again, could think outside of destiny and fate and with his head rather than his warped soul.

How could he go back, though? He saw the way the maidservants’ hands trembled when they brought him meals. He knew the enormity of the harm that he had caused. There would be no redemption when the sheer sight of his face would be torment for them, regardless of the man wearing it.

For days, he held his heart and wondered what he could possibly do, drinking little and eating less and sleeping not at all.

In worry, the queen came to his door and knocked, having heard that he had ceased to take his meals, fearing that her son was lost to her. She could not bear that, no matter what he had done, and she told him, at the door, that she forgave him, that she accepted that the fault for his misdeeds was her own, as his mother, having raised him. That she would find a way to exonerate him, that she had paid the families of all those he had harmed handsome sums in restitution, that the palace’s staff had been replaced, that all would be as it was if he would only come back to her safely.

His broken heart whispered, in sticky-sweet words, to return it to beat in his chest as before, to open the door, to take her up on her offer. That even if he had not truly changed, that the _world_ could change to fit him. That he was a prince of a powerful nation, and that fate had a grand plan and a noble purpose for him, as it did for all princes.

He told his mother, his embodied voice rough with disuse, that he would think about it, and ate the food she left him, which satisfied her.

Before he could make the choice a second time, he sealed his ribcage closed, though it hurt as much as the cutting-open. Then, he found a box, poured the jewelry and trinkets from it, and locked his heart inside, tucking it into his shirt. It was part of him, and for all that it was poison to him, he could never stray far from it. He pocketed the priceless gems and made himself a rope of his bedsheets, long enough to reach the rocks below.

He left a note for his parents, apologizing for all that he had done and just as much for what he was about to do.

Climbing to the rocks below his tower, he pulled the rope down after, and used the knifelike shard of the mirror to bloody the earth below.

In doing so, he killed the prince, and became something else.

Having been imprisoned for so long, he was near unrecognizable as he fenced the stolen jewels in trade for provisions and a little ship. The land was enveloped in a kind of vicarious mourning, despite the gossip and speculation that had surrounded his tenure as prince, as the king and queen remained much beloved to their subjects and their grief at his loss was well known. None thought to enquire after his identity, once they heard the prices he was asking for the trinkets.

For his part, one misty morning, he set out on his small craft for parts unknown, for a place to build a new life for himself. The hollow in his chest still ached with the reality of what he had done, and at moments, the only thought that kept him from throwing himself into the cold surf was that his suffering was well-earned, and that to die would be to end it prematurely.

That proved to be enough to keep sailing.

His heart still whispered noxious suggestions and barbed cruelties to him in the night, but beneath the sound of the ocean lapping against the hull, the castle disappearing behind him, lit up like a candelabra on the horizon, at least he found that he could no longer hear it quite so well.

If someday it went silent, he thought, perhaps then he might come home.”

“Thank you, dad,” Rose murmurs, already half asleep. Her squiddle nightlight casts an odd purple pall over the room, makes it obvious the way her eyelashes keep fluttering closed and open again with the effort of staying awake.

He sighs from the foot of her bed, closing the book of fairytales and setting it back on the shelf.

“I don’t know what you like so much about this one. It’s not a hell of an ending.”

“It’s a good ending,” she argues blearily.

“We’ll continue this spirited literary debate in the morning. On the way to school. Because it’s a school night. Go to sleep. I’ve kept you up long enough already.”

Despite the brusqueness of his words, he pauses to double-triple check that she is well and truly tucked in, that she has a cup of water by the side of her bed, that her schoolclothes and backpack are laid out for the next morning. All is well. She’s almost ten, now. These bedtime rituals are as much for him as for her, at this point.

She humors him. 

He worries about her. 

Remembers all too well how lonely he was, in her place. It won’t be like that for his daughter. Things will be different for her. They already are.

“G’...night.”

“Sweet dreams, little lady.”

....

“You’re more resistant than I expected. It’s exciting.”

He recognizes the face in the mirror, though only from descriptions. Rose has done her research, for all that hindsight alone is twenty-twenty. The only thing his ecto-daughter appreciates less than being exploited in the service of a higher power is not knowing how it happened. So she knows - she knew, she read, she studied, she consulted her fucking tea leaves or something, he wasn’t _there_ \- and she told him, in uncharacteristically subdued tones, about the man with the cueball for a head, who used her and others like her (she wasn’t even remarkable to him, she noted bitterly, just one cog in the machine, interchangeable with another save for the lofty designs of Fate) to end the world.

At the moment, he’s not sure if he’s grateful for that knowledge or not.

Because the entity speaking from the mirror moves with him, follows him from reflective surface to reflective surface. Is something of him. Something of him that did that to her. To others, too. Created of him, in his image, and bound to him now.

“Yeah,” he retorts, already exhausted by the preceding conversation and his accompanying musings, “I’m not a scared preteen girl with the death of everyone I love hanging over me like a fucking guillotine, so I’d imagine I’m a harder sell than you’re used to.”

“That has nothing to do with it. The situations are hardly comparable. Your acquiescence is inevitable, after all, but the path itself is dimly lit. I rarely interact with equals, and lack a proper frame of reference. I have few equals.”

“Interesting. So if I call Rose right now, what do you think she’d tell me to do?”

“She surrendered to the inevitable, as you will. And as she will again, as a point of interest. If she was as sincere as she claims to be about her resistance, don’t you think she would have... resisted? She didn’t, and she won’t. There’s a part of her that -”

“Not an answer to my question,” he snaps. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Not a question worth answering. You’re the one who brought her up, you know. Your coming to the defense of her honor is charming, but unnecessary. I have nothing but respect for Ms. Lalonde.”

“Mrs.,” he corrects him. “She’s married.”

“Ah. Do pass along my well-wishes. To the lovely Ms. Maryam, I suppose? It’s so nice when I can play a role in bringing such exceptional young ladies together.”

“I will unequivocally not be doing that.”

“No, you won’t. Tragic though it is. It might bring her some comfort, knowing this outcome is exactly as written. The alpha timeline remains intact. All, for now, is as it must be, and her ephemeral connubial bliss is just as much a fundamental part of that as our conversation now. A place for everything, and everything in its place.”

“I just want to fucking brush my teeth and go to sleep, dude. Can you ease up with the vicarious creeping on my _extremely_ married ectodaughter?”

“I can, but I won’t.”

“Is that shit inevitable too?”

“Yes. You seem to be getting the hang of this fairly quickly. I expected nothing less.”

He rakes a hand through his hair, and while he can feel it practically standing on end, damp from his evening shower, in the mirror, a blank white sphere looks back at him.

“What’ll it take for you to leave me alone, then?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dirk.”

“Oh, _bullshit_, really?”

“Really. You came searching for me. Rose gave you quite the description to work with, didn’t she? You felt the words she relayed, how they resonated. Who they recalled, distantly. Echoes of echoes of your Self. And _you_ sought _me_. Well, here I am. You may dislike the answer to your question, but your visceral response has no bearing on the truth of the matter.”

“Which is?”

“I’m a part of you. Don’t you remember, Dirk? Try a little harder. You were doing _so well_.”

....

It could be hazy midmorning or sometime between sunset and darkness. The light filtering through their drawn curtains is dim and blue-grey. That’s nice, because he can see Jake’s face, not just silhouetted in profile, but illuminated just slightly by what remains or what begins of the daylight. His lips are moving, and his brow is furrowed in thought.

He should be listening, but he can’t stop _watching_.

They’re in between times, in between places, tangled in sheets, but making no effort to extricate themselves. Two people, as close to each other as possible. For once, Jake doesn’t seem like something unreachably more than human, and he doesn’t feel like something condemnably less.

It’s nice.

But he should _really_ be listening, and to that end, he picks up his head from its cosy resting place on a conveniently located bicep, and focuses. Not an easy task. Whatever time it is, he’s exhausted, feels like he hasn’t slept in too long. Something dark and heavy is snarled up in his bones, and it’s so hard to forget about that sort of thing. Even harder to explain.

“If you’ll forgive me, I just can’t take that sort of thing seriously,” Jake is saying. “I mean, what dashing protagonist in his right mind has ever passively accepted the lot handed to him by fate? And don’t say Harry Potter, that’s a terrible example. Even Roxy agrees that ending was utter nonsense, and you know how they can be about their beloved wizards.”

He snorts and nestles more thoroughly into the covers, flexing his shoulders with a satisfying sequence of cracks and pops that trails down his spine. Jake sighs, lazily tracing his shitty tattoo with a fingertip. No rush to any of it.

“So you don’t believe in predetermination… at all? And here I thought you were the guy who could believe in anything,” he says, after a moment, glancing up to get a better look at his eyes.

“Eh. All that business, it can tell you that the sun’ll rise in the morning, for sure, but it can’t tell you what you’ll do with the day,” Jake says.

“It kind of can. That’s the point. Everything you’ve got in here,” he says, running his thumb emphatically across Jake’s forehead, “and everything everybody else has in their own, and all that’s happened… even discounting the fact that we effectively won a game by leveraging its immutable-determination mechanic for the propagation of its own existence, what _is_ sets the parameters for what _will be_.”

“Sure,” he replies, shrugging and turning the gesture into a self-indulgent stretch. In doing so, he nudges Dirk just slightly away, then smiles and draws him back even closer, head tucked against Jake’s chest, a comforting arm draped around his shoulders. “_Parameters_. Skaia may be a… what did you call it, an engine of immutable determinism? But I don’t believe for a second that we’re simply helpless pawns before it, or within it, or whatever. Watch.”

Dirk watches. He never really stopped doing so.

Jake leans in as though to kiss him, and he tilts his head back, waiting. Instead of the expected kiss, though, his awful boyfriend blows a raspberry against his neck, chuckling as he sputters indignantly and twists away.

“Now, Mr. Mechanist, did your determinism warn you I’d do that?”

“Fucking hope players,” he grumbles, nuzzling back into Jake’s arms despite his wounded pride, refusing to meet his gaze.

“Earth C’s favorite pastime. Come on, now, what can you truly predict of a person?”

“Depends. If you have infinite knowledge of their narrative permutations, most things. All things, really. A machine that you can take apart and reassemble doesn’t have the fundamental capacity to surprise you. Once you can see the wheels, there’s no unseeing them.”

Jake chuckles.

“Well, can you?”

“Not yet.”

“S’pose you ought to let me know when you figure it out, dear heart. Until then,” he pauses, shifting his position just slightly, allowing him to pepper the side of Dirk’s face with kisses until he finally turns out of his extremely-not-sulking position to meet Jake’s lips with his own in a long, deep kiss, “figure I’ll just have to keep surprising you.”

....

The first day is hard. He doesn’t know Dave and Rose very well. Their baby pictures and announcements of birth and one photo Roxy must have taken around Hanukkah, two little white-haired toddlers looking stiff and overdressed beside a partially-lit menorah, are taped to his fridge, because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but none of that actually equates to ‘knowing more about his niece and nephew than their names’.

He’s pretty sure they’re… what, eight, now? He’s never had kids of any age in his apartment, spent hours after he got a phone call from the fucking _courthouse_, based on some custodial agreement that he can’t even remember signing, packing away hazardous equipment and general robot-based junk strewn around his living space, and it’s still woefully inadequate. It’s the best they’re going to get, but they deserve better.

They’re sleeping on a futon in his living room, because the apartment only has four rooms, and his tools and gear are already taking up half of his bedroom.

It’s not ideal.

None of this was ever going to be ideal, though.

Rose gazes around his apartment with wide, dark eyes.

“Do you have a job?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says flatly, pausing as he unpacks the groceries he picked up before his sister’s children. Chicken nuggets and stuff, the kinds of things he’s pretty sure kids eat. “I design machines. Sometimes for factories, sometimes for movies, when they need them. Sometimes just for fun, and then I sell them to galleries or collectors.”

“Then how come you live in such a small apartment?”

Dave elbows her in the ribs, and she squeaks with indignation, elbowing him back, harder.

“It doesn’t matter,” her brother mutters. “It’s fine.”

“It does _so_ matter! We live here, now, and I want to know why we have to sleep in the living room -”

“You won’t be here forever,” he says. Privately, he says a small prayer of thanks. “Just until Roxy’s - your mom - until she feels better.”

Until she’s released from court-ordered rehab.

“That could be a while,” Rose says shortly.

“It’s _fine_!” Dave insists. “She _said_ it was only going to be a little- ”

“Have you had lunch?” he interrupts from the kitchen, hopefully before elbows start being thrown around again. “I’ve got a plate of chicken nuggets with your names on it.”

“Thanks, uncle Dirk,” Dave calls from the living room.

Rose might or might not grumble something about hating chicken nuggets, but he willfully avoids hearing it.

He sets the oven up to preheat - wow, it’s been embarrassingly long since he cooked in something other than the microwave - and takes a box of nuggets out, scrutinizing the back panel. Meat feels risky. Whether or not he’s out on a limb, he really doesn’t want to give the kids food poisoning or some shit. He feels inept enough about the whole thing. At least they’re old enough to talk.

When he first got the phone call, all he remembered of them was the picture on his fridge, and eight is a whole different ballgame than two.

Of course, he’s inept at both sports, but it’s a lot harder to screw up a kid that already has a personality other than putting random junk in its mouth.

On a whim, he brings out some frozen mixed vegetables from the shadowy, ice-encrusted reaches of his freezer, and puts it in what he’s pretty sure is a microwave-safe plastic bowl to cook. Oh fucking shit. Now he’s second-guessing everything. Obviously he’s eaten from the bowl, and microwaved it a shitton of times, usually with canned soup or leftover chow mein inside. But kids are more sensitive to that sort of stuff, and also he doesn’t give a shit if _he_ dies of BPA-induced esophageal cancer in a few decades or whatever, but… kids. Roxy’s kids.

Fuck it. He’s pretty sure it’s worse not to feed them vegetables than it is to feed them super-low-grade poisoned vegetables, right?

Theoretically he should probably call Roxy for that kind of stupid question, but he doesn’t know what else to say to her, or even if that’s allowed, yet, under the terms of her sentence.

He sighs, pops the bowl in the microwave, and tries to stop thinking about it.

They’ve got their sleeping bags unrolled and set up by the time he heads out to check on them, which is good, he supposes. Dave told him on the drive over that Roxy reassured them it would be like camping, though they’d never actually been camping. Rose made a world-weary sort of noise, but didn’t argue.

He’s quieter now that they’re actually in the house, has a sketchpad and some colored pencils out, and is mostly ignoring the goings-on in the apartment to stare out the window at the Houston skyline. Rose is laid out on top of her sleeping bag, reading a book, though she snaps it shut when she sees him approach.

“Lunch in twenty,” he announces. “Is there anything you guys need? Sunday’s a good time for shopping, if you forgot anything or if there’s anything you’re used to having.”

“We don’t need anything,” Rose says, at the same time Dave looks up and tells him “Rose gets headaches sometimes.”

He looks from child to child, frowning.

“I’m fine, Dave,” she insists.

“Not when you get a headache, you’re not.”

He makes a mental note to review the contents of his sparsely populated medicine cabinet.

“Well, Dave can’t sleep without a night light,” Rose retorts, folding her arms across her chest with a long-suffering sigh. “He gets nightmares.”

“Rose won’t eat corn because she’s a baby and she thinks it looks like teeth.”

“Dave had to go to a special class because his handwriting was so bad everyone thought he couldn’t write.”

“Rose scared away three babysitters because she kept pretending to drown in the bathtub.”

“They were incompetent! At least one of them had lied about being CPR certified.”

“Okay, not that I don’t appreciate the information, but I was thinking more like a shopping list, or things that would make the place feel a little more homey?” he interjects, making another mental note to revise ‘bath time’ to ‘shower time’, since he’s definitely not CPR certified either.

“I mean, thanks, but we already have a home,” Dave says.

“A nightlight,” Rose says. “Or else he’ll wake me up.”

“One time -!”

“A nightlight,” she repeats, and opens her book, which effectively ends the conversation.

He spoke too soon about the first day. It’s the first _week_ that’s hard, and the second, as a matter of fact. It’s summer, fortunately, so they don’t have to deal with school, but he works when there’s work rather than on a schedule, and it’s kind of a mad dash to find something to occupy their time during the day so he doesn’t have to bring them to his workshop. Luckily, there’s an art gallery a few blocks away that he’s worked with before, and they’re doing some sort of summer camp, and he’s able to leverage his hashtag-_connections_ to get them on the roster with dead-zero notice.

Dave is overjoyed. The theme of the first week’s instruction is comic book design, and they have a rotating crew of local artists through to teach the kids about all sorts of stuff, and his fridge is getting crowded with his handiwork. Some of them are really fuckin’ good. His favorite is a partially-finished strip about a cat that with seven toes that becomes a thumb wrestling champion.

Rose mostly reads her book in the corner, and isn’t shy about telling him so, but Dave’s enthusiasm is infectious enough to wear her abrasiveness down to a manageable level.

And he was like that as a kid, after all, and Roxy put up with his shit, and he turned out fine.

Extremely fine.

Thirty-one, living alone in a three-room apartment, nearly a decade out from his last relationship spanning longer than a few months, it’s fine.

He doesn’t really mind having the kids around, once he gets the hang of it and realizes they’re not just going to spontaneously combust or something. He learns how to cook pancakes, macaroni and cheese, and other things that don’t exclusively involve reheating frozen food, and buys a few microwave safe bowls. Rose has enough to say about his egg-preparation methods that he lets her fry breakfast, under careful supervision, only to learn that she’s been cooking their meals on weekends for the last few months, and is basically a better home chef than he is.

That’s a bit of a slap to the face. He’d sort of known things were getting bad for Roxy. She’d stopped responding to his texts for basically the last year. That’d never been a good sign. He kicks himself internally, now, for not trying harder, not reaching out _better_, he’s her brother, for fuck’s sake, he should have…

There are kids involved, and that’s what fuckin’ seals it. 

He’s not sure if they’re any better off with him, really - by the time he picks them up from art camp most days, all the other students are gone, and the instructors are mostly just looking after them as a favor to him, since they’re on the scene together. He has no idea how long it’s going to take for his professional acquaintances’ good will to run out, and in the meantime, Rose is bored out of her mind and Dave is increasingly anxious about overstaying his welcome.

Over time, though, he gets better at keeping the new spinning plates in the air and slowly figures out alternatives. He brings them to the library when Rose finishes the books she brought, and picks up a shitton of pamphlets about activities for school-aged kids while he’s there, including a summer camp she might actually like. On one particularly busy evening, the two of them have dinner with Karkat and Feferi and their twin girls while he installs a project at a gallery a few hours’ drive away. 

On the way home, Rose asks if she and Dave can live with them next, but he’s long since figured out how to tell her sincere displeasure from her jokes.

“Glad you got along,” he says, entirely without affect. “I’ll get to work on those adoption papers once you show me how to spell Peixes.” 

Within a month, Dave slips up over breakfast and calls him ‘dad’.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Rose hadn’t borne witness to her brother’s subsequent beet-red flush and sputtering apologies through his cereal and decided to very deliberately pick up the appellation for him as a way to needle Dave, presumably. Or him. She can be fucking inscrutible, sometimes. He deliberately doesn’t comment, ever. She escalates. Tries different wordings. Almost breaks his composure when she asks the man behind the bakery counter of the supermarket for an extra free cookie, for her _daddy_.

He does eat the cookie, though. It’d be rude not to.

What’s more remarkable about the passage of time is that Roxy never calls. The kids don’t ask, or anything, but he’d expected… something more than nothing, at least. Her silence has always been more terrifying to him than anything she could say. There’s never been anything so big, between the two of them, that it can’t be worked out. A thousand stupid fights, a thousand and one makeups. That’s just what it’s like, loving someone so different from him. Different, yeah, but the love is what makes it work.

The silence from her end was bad enough when he didn’t really know something was wrong, though he also did. He must have known, on some level. Now, it’s excruciating. The less energy he’s devoting to panicking about Rose and Dave and acting, assiduously, like he isn’t, the more energy he has to spare for panicking about his sister. How long is this going to take? How long until they ask?

Is it horrible, that they haven’t asked? How bad was it, really?

It’s not like he can sit them down and ask for a recap, though Rose could probably give him one, and it would be none too gentle on Roxy, either. But no matter how much he wonders, he’d rather let them have a month or two of… well, shit being as normal as he can make it. Is that insanely selfish of him? Is he really that fucking lonely?

Maybe. Maybe Roxy being off the map was hitting him harder, and for longer, and cutting deeper than he realized. It reminds him of better times, having a couple of kids giving each other shit, but ultimately loving the hell out of each other, in the house.

Selfish, definitely.

He’s never been accused of being any other way, to be fair.

The first _month_ was hard, but the second one is easier. Dave wants to see his workshop, diligently sits through a ten-minute lecture on safety and not touching shit, which is damned impressive. Keeping him in one place for any quantity of time is like nailing jello to the wall, and typically about as messy. Rose keeps a watchful eye on the proceedings, a book laid open on her lap. It’s one that she borrowed from his shelf after she demolished the Earthsea series in barely a week, Lavinia, another Le Guin novel that he thought she might enjoy.

He can’t remember if there’s anything objectionable in it. She gravely assured him that if she encountered any kissing, she would close her eyes and turn the page.

“I’ll come with you,” she announces, setting her book aside, a rare gesture.

“You sure about that? I promised Dave a trip to the park, after, and you’d be on the hook for playground time, too.”

“A high price to pay, to ensure the both of you are supervised in your shenanigans.”

She nods, grimly but regally, and true to form, follows them to the truck. They’re both still stuck in car seats in the back of the cab, but at least that seems to be something they’re used to under Roxy’s supervision. Christ.

Dave loves the chewing gum robot. And the articulated herd of model dinosaurs, each painstakingly hand-painted, a skill he taught himself specifically for the job. And the pair of oversized VR glasses, the headset still clunky and literally too heavy for a neck as small as his to hold it up. Needs work, he’ll admit.

But he’ll also admit that it’s amazing, watching him marvel at the dinosaurs, name all of them, rattle off facts. 

“Wow, a utahraptor! But those weren’t alive in the same era as ceratosaurus, uncle Dirk, unless they’re time-traveling dinosaurs. Oh my god. You thought of that, didn’t you, they time traveled! That’s so cool! Can you cut one open? You know, so you can show me how it works? Can I make one? What did you make it out of? Did you see actual dinosaur bones, like, to base it on?”

Yes, right, yes, yes, of course, with as much enthusiasm as he’s ever done anything, if he wants to, reclaimed steel and arduinos for the skeleton and the movement, and obviously.

“It’s not bad,” Rose says.

Dave argues with her all the way to the park, his favorite dinosaur in hand. He picked the stegosaurus, when offered the choice. He can’t seem to stop messing with the buttons on its feet, which, when engaged, make it toss its head and swing its tail with eerily lifelike motion parameters.

“Off you go,” he tells them, upon reaching the mulched area with its towering jungle gym, and he doesn’t have to tell them twice. Rose puts up a good front, but when Dave tags her ‘it’, she bolts after him with zero hesitation.

For his part, he settles down on a bench to watch, still feeling a little awkward, even after so many weeks with the kids, sitting and staring at a playground full of children. The little cliques of parents - trolls and humans alike, but mostly moms - watch from the busier side of the little park, with the fountains and the stand of shady trees, in what definitely feels like quiet judgement. He doesn’t like it much, but there’s not a lot to do about that.

He doesn’t take Dave and Rose to this park often, since he’s not a fan of the fucking ocular spanish inquisition he _feels_ like he’s getting, but here he is, and there they are, and he’s got his phone open and he’s pretending he doesn’t care.

They dash around the playground, nearly impossible to keep track of their movements, and he follows them periodically with his eyes. Some kind of swingset contest that involves jumping off at the highest point and leaving a mark to try to land past in the mulch, a rapid pivot to monkey bars, and then just nestling themselves in a net-like climbing apparatus, Dave playing with his dinosaur, both of them apparently locked in serious discussion.

He checks his watch. An hour should be satisfactory to them both, and then he’ll drag them somewhere fun for lunch. Perfect. Guardian of the year.

In doing so, he loses track of them for a second, and actually puts his phone down to comb over the area, sighing with relief when he finds them trying to climb a tree off to the left, near the fence.

Nearby, a troll woman stands, not quite with her back to him, and she catches his eye for no particularly good reason. Through pure luck, the sunlight happens to be glinting off… a hook that she has in place of a hand?

He squints, then immediately tries not to look like he’s staring, which is fortunately fairly easy to pull off from behind his shades. What looked, at first glance, like a straight-up hook, actually appears to be a voluntary opening split hook system, a far more complicated kind of prosthesis. The prehensile pair of hooks is currently closed around a near-empty iced coffee, the clear Dunkin Donuts cup sweating in the blistering late July sun.

That seems like a weird thing to be paying attention to, and he internally chides himself for being a nosy piece of shit. Yes, robots are cool, yes, prosthetic limbs are incredibly cool, both conceptually and in execution, but neither of those fundamentally true statements excuses him from basic decorum.

_You fight that decision._

It’s not fucking rudeness, she’s familiar. Something about the way she smears blue lipstick on the iced coffee straw, messes with her phone intermittently, and otherwise occupies herself by tracking, with surprising intensity, the movement of a dark-haired little troll girl on the jungle gym. You can’t see her face from this angle, but it _has_ to be - but this isn’t the kind of universe where she would show up, is it?

“Hey, Pirate!” she shouts at one point, and you blink in surprise, grateful for the protection of your shades. “What does mom say about biting?”

He misses most of the child’s reply, but catches the phrase ‘when they deserve it’.

_You_ don’t miss _shit_, especially when she turns to reveal a scar like a sunburst, gnarled black tissue eclipsing the part of the face that typically holds the eye. And looks directly at you.

And smiles.

He freezes, caught in the tractor beam of her intense, cerulean gaze.

_You_ internally roll your eyes. You don’t mind this version of yourself at all, frankly, and you’ve been more or less sitting back and letting him do his thing, waiting for the story to pick up. Since it always, ultimately, picks up, or else it just peters out and _ends_. You never get to hang around this long in a single instantiation of unreality unless some sort of _something_ is on the horizon, and you doubt that the big crescendo is gifting Dave a robot dinosaur.

In fact, you’re a little torn, even as she begins to saunter over, since the hair on the back of your neck is already standing on end with worry that this is the start of some particularly noteworthy conflict. That one of the kids is going to break an arm or some shit the second you look away, that things are going too damn well and you’re due for another unpleasant sojourn through the difficulties of guardianship.

“Well, well, well,” she announces, then pauses. You can almost see her considering whether to add another five ‘well’s.

“Vriska,” you say, nodding your acknowledgement, barely a fraction of a millimeter's incline of your forehead. Preempting, blessedly, the extension of her greeting to eight repetitions.

“Larger, marginally more competent Strider.”

“You flatter me, Serket.”

“No, I really don’t. It’s not saying much.”

“I’ll take what I can get these days,” you say flatly.

Now that you’ve taken the reins from your embodied self, you wonder why you didn’t try this earlier. It’s easier than you expected, by orders of magnitude. No uncertainty, no attempts to retake control. Your grasp on your own personal narrative, at least, comes almost as easily as it ever has.

In your hindbrain, he’s muttering ‘what the fuck’ and trying to get you to pay attention to the kids on the playground, but not making any kind of herculean effort to actually get you to comply. You narrow your eyes at Vriska, though the gesture is invisible, again, behind sunglasses.

“You’re welcome,” she says.

“Are you _doing something_ to my narrative?”

“Making it better through my sheer presence? Ha, yeah, no, I don’t give a shit about the glorified-babysitter meat suit you’re wearing, believe it or not.”

“Alright, glad we’ve settled that. Enjoy your afternoon.”

“Hoooooooold on, Strider. You’re not getting off that easily. This is my narrative, bitch. What the fuck do you think you’re doing, here? What’s your game?”

“Seemed like you had a handle on that yourself. Glorified babysitter, glorified babysitting until something happens. Getting a feeling one of my, to put it kindly, _overadventurous_ children is going to hurt themselves. We’re conveniently near the hospital, Dave dropped some comment over breakfast about having brittle bones, and nothing _has_ happened so far.”

“Huh.” She spends a solid second trying to maneuver her straw into her mouth with her tongue. “Okay. Just stay out of the legal system. Consider this a metanarrative restraining order! I don’t want you dicking around with what I’ve got going on in this one. Fuck. Out of all the Houstons in all the shitty multiverse, you had to walk into mine! I mean, _you_-you.”

“In the flesh.”

She sighs dramatically, the plastic cup creaking against her steel hook-grip as she flexes her shoulders beneath an entirely weather-inappropriate coat.

If there is some sort of disaster forthcoming, there’s no sign of it based on the energy of pure glee positively wafting from the playground. Dave waves to get your - his - shit, you’re just going to keep doing this as long as you can, it’s almost heady, being a ‘you’ again - attention, and you put your hand to your forehead to better observe as he wriggles his way through a near-complete, jerky one-armed pull-up onto the monkey bars, his dinosaur still in hand.

You have some notes on his form, but you flash an ‘okay’ sign in his direction and turn back to Vriska.

“How are you?” you ask, sincerely curious. “What… exactly are you doing here?”

“Where else would I be?” she retorts, frowning. “Turns out, fucked as it is, if you die in paradox space, you die in real life. But _yoooooooou_ wouldn’t happen to know anything about me getting torn to pieces and tossed into a black hole, now, would you?”

In the absence of any particularly meaningful response, you shrug.

“No hard feelings, obviously. It’s like that sometimes. Shit’s gotta get done one way or another. People get chucked into black holes, it happens. No use getting bent out of shape about it! You’re a bitch, Strider, and you can go fuck yourself any time you feel like it, but I get it. Been there.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” you say shortly.

“Oh, too good to debase yourself with some common ground? Sorry to tarnish your name by association, sounds _terrible_ for you. Not like we’re both in the same post-canon purgatory or anything, not like there could be aaaaaaaany reason for that!”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what _do_ you mean? C’mon. I’ve got time! Tell me all about how you’ve neeeeeeeever had to give up pieces of yourself to keep the world turning. You’re here because you did everything right the first time, and everyone shook your hand and said ‘great job’, and there’s nothing left to figure out about you or your deal!”

“I understand, on a metaphysical level, where ‘here’ is,” you argue. “But none of that bullshit has any bearing on - my ectodaughter put me here. I ended up here through a completely logically consistent sequence of events, based on the consequences of a clear-cut series of narrative indiscretions. Presumably that’s what happened to you, though I have a feeling you’ll explain to me at length why that’s moronic and I’m stupid for thinking it. So let me have it. Let’s go.”

Vriska snorts.

“Oh, right, not a light player. Easy mistake! You’ve really got the never shutting up aspect of it down.”

“It’s been said.”

“Either way, you’re thinking about it all wrong. Is that really what Rose told you? Seriously, that this is all her handiwork? Because she’s a piece of work, but she’s usually not that far off the mark.”

“Admittedly, I probably could have been paying closer attention to the exactitudes of the monologue.”

“Eh, and _I_ probably could’ve saved myself a lot of grief putting Pirate to sleep if I’d recorded a few of those lectures of hers.”

“Pirate.”

“Like your kids have normal names. What the fuck is a ‘Dave’? Where the fuck did that come from?”

“Human Hebreic literary and cultural tradition?”

“Yeah, I give so much of a shit. Pirate is pirate because of pirates. See how great that explanation was?”

You nod once in reluctant acknowledgement. It’s a pretty metal name for a kid, you’ll give her that.

“Anyway, where was I? God, I’m losing my edge!!!!!! This is why I don’t talk to losers! Oblivion.”

“Oblivion indeed,” you say.

“Rose didn’t make this place. It’s just a place that _is_, as long as I am. As long as you are.”

“Unusually poetic description.”

“Fuck off, you don’t know me well enough to comment on my linguistic choices. I have layers. You literally don’t know shit about me. But I -” she pauses, and you think for a moment that she might poke you square in the chest with a chewed down fingernail. “- _I_ know _you_.”

You scoff.

“Light bullshit?”

“No, asshole, you’re just clearly blundering around like an overgrown moobeast in a stoneware storeroom trying to jack my _exact_ swagger. You want what I’ve got. Or what I had, at least. Again, no hard feelings, obviously, half the time I’m LARPing my fucking self too, that’s why I get it! It’s just super lame and obvious that you wish you were me. So bad.”

“Oh, too far. Too fucking far, Serket. I’m an original. Even at my worst, the shit I do is the shit _I_ do. I spent the last fucking eternity _accepting_ that. We’ve got nothing to do with each other, beyond a clear penchant for pretentious bullshit, which I can _acknowledge_ if not _ever_ respect.”

“Full offense, Strider, you’re dumber than you look if you think we don’t have shit in common. Like, what story were _you_ reading? We’re the same archetype, man.” She pulls the straw out of her mostly-finished iced coffee in an emphatic gesture, showering you with cold and vaguely sticky droplets. You don’t flinch, and she goes on as though nothing happened. “You’ve admitted as much yourself, right? You and me, we fix shit. It’s our schtick. We do what needs to be done. We make it happen. And in return, we get smacked down, over and over again, by the back of our shitty universe’s uncaring hand. Everybody but us gets to develop on our metanarrative dime. And we’re stuck treading water for eternity, because we committed ‘bluh, atrocities’ to get there. As if they didn’t need us. As if we weren’t the only reason the narrative fucking worked in the first place! Sorry for being the Deus Ex Author’s Pet so fucking always, fuck you too!”

She jams the straw back in her cup. It makes a sort of shrieking sound in protest. Her smile is triumphant, but the expression in her single brilliantly blue eye is anything but. She looks old. Tired. Just for a second.

“Literally,” she adds. “Some of it is so ham-fisted it makes me want to puke. Where’s your page at? How’s he doing?”

“Legs still work.”

“Oh, bring it on, bitch! If you want to Vriscourse, we can Vriscourse. I don’t give a shit. I’ve heard everything. I guarantee you don’t have the kind of material that can throw me. Fuck you! I know who the fuck I am and what the fuck I did, and you can’t say shit about me that I don’t already know.” Though her coffee is literally just ice and a thin layer of brownish icemelt at the bottom of the cup, she takes a long, rattling suck of her drink, much to your bemusement.

When she resumes speaking, her tone is softer, though not exactly gentle.

“They needed a hero from me, at least. Sounds like you got to play the villain. Either way, no getting Schrodinger’s cat back in the bag. They’ll take it from you if you don’t make it your choice. Narratives gonna narrative.”

“Who’s they?” you ask.

“Oh, you know.”

She gestures up at the cloudless summer sky.

“The lower stratosphere?”

“Don’t play dumb, it’s not cute. You know what this is. It’ll drive you crazy if you’re not careful. You’ve run into Gamzee by now, right? Yeah, you have. Hell, I sorta figured it was the same story with you. Fucker’s out of his mind, and I can’t really blame him! Can’t you feel them watching?”

“I don’t know,” you say slowly. “I didn’t… before. Not exactly. It wasn’t so much an awareness of…”

You cut yourself off, grimacing as you realize you’ve been effectively duped into taking her seriously as someone who can help you with literally anything. The day you accept _help_ from Vriska Serket. That’ll be the fucking day. Right after you accept it from yourself, and a few weeks after pigs have taken to the sky as aerialists.

“Let’s say I do. Let’s say your explanation makes sense. You seem to have a real good idea of what’s going on in this place,” you say, crossing your arms and watching her pretend she’s not watching you.

“Yeah. Been here a while. You figure shit out or you don’t. Simple as that.”

“How long have you been in this one?” you ask, figuring she’ll get your meaning.

“Oh. Years. Not that time means anything or whatever.”

“Shit.”

“There’s a trick to it. Some of them are better than others, obviously. I tore apart the first few thousand, because it was just so _stupid_, but eventually you have to just… go where they lead you. You can’t fight it forever, even when you’ve got as much juice as I do! And then you realize some of them are like… okay. And you can drag it out, if you can make it interesting enough. Not to get too fucking real with you, Strider, but I like it here. I love my wife. I love my stupid awesome kid. It’s nice. Sometimes you catch a break! And I’m not letting this one go.”

“If you so completely comprehend the way things work, and I’m not saying that you don’t, but I’m _wondering_ \- why haven’t you left? Why haven’t you gotten the fuck out of dodge? They’re not all like this. You can’t play house in Houston forever. You know that as well as I do. Maybe even better. There’s a whole universe of relevance past the veil. And there’s a way back in. I don’t know what it is, but there has to be. Rose doesn’t make empty promises.”

He - the self you’ve sublimated to have this conversation - smiles at this. There’s nothing Rose hates more than cardboard authority. Nothing she wants more than an honest guiding hand, to believe that someone other than her might have all of the answers. It’s dangerous. Very dangerous, for both of you.

Because you used to - you… you want the same thing. And it doesn’t exist. It’s not true. Trying to make the untrue into the true destroys the both of you every time. You know. You’ve lived it in a million timelines. You know.

You understand that much.

“There’s somewhere out there with less suffering,” you say. “Somewhere we could reach, someday.”

She snorts dismissively.

“I’m gonna stop you right there, Strider. _Everybody’s_ suffering!” she says, tossing her now-empty iced coffee at a garbage can, missing, and ignoring the results. “C’mon, bitch, let’s get you some lunch.”

As you bend to pick up and dispose of the cup - the other moms are giving you increasingly dirty looks, either for your crime of association or vestigially to the unfamiliarity of your presence - Vriska whistles loudly.

“Pirate! Round up the weird little blond kids, we’re going to McDonalds!”

You do the only thing you can do. You follow Vriska and her kid the three blocks to the golden arches, Rose and Dave arguing enthusiastically with Pirate as you walk. It’s possibly the strangest thing you’ve ever done, as an entity voluntarily doing things, but you don’t stop. You keep pace. You wonder what the fuck is going on.

But you’ve long since gotten used to that last part.

Once you’re in the air-conditioned restaurant, which isn’t packed, but isn’t empty, either, Vriska shoos the kids into the McPlayplace and orders for all of you, completely ignoring both your objections to her charity and your insistence that Rose hates chicken nuggets.

As you wait, she takes a table that allows you a window in to the area where children are definitely supposed to be supervised. None of the other parents seem to have gotten the memo either. She upgrades to a full cup of blue powerade and fresh ice to crunch. It’s not quite obnoxious enough for a murder-suicide in a fast food joint, but it’s pretty close.

“You told me not to get in trouble with the law,” you prompt.

“Yeah. That’s my narrative turf!”

“How so?”

“I met Terezi - you know, woke up here, that’s usually how the good ones start - when I got charged with some super low key domestic terrorism this one time.”

You sigh.

“And you married the cop.”

“No, asshole, I married my defense attorney. Cut me some fucking slack! I have standards. Sometimes. _This_ isn’t the one where I marry the cop, is all I’m saying. There’s, well, others.”

“I hope motherhood hasn’t put a damper on your burgeoning career in, what, firebombing federal facilities?”

“Actually, it was the Rainforest headquarters. Fuck those guys. And I mostly just blog these days. I’m a career trophy wife. They love me at the PTA meetings. Or they did, before… you know. Gotta keep it spicy one way or another.”

“Then you’ve been in this one… give me a number.” You glance through the window to the McPlayplace, trying to guess Pirate’s age. It’s hard to tell with trolls.

“Full decade, few months change.”

You whistle, long and low.

“Impressive. Textually, I mean? It feels like ten years?”

“Every minute of it,” she says, puffing up proudly, setting down her drink to square her boney shoulders properly, her hooks scratching over the surface of the table. “Look, I’m not proud of all the shit I did to get here. There’s plenty about me that… I don’t know. But I can keep a _fucking_ narrative going, Strider. Hell, that’s why I’m not so surprised to see you. Things were getting slow. Time to take it up a notch. Get self-referential and metafictional all up in this domestic bliss AU.”

“Huh,” you say.

Some of that… some parts of that would explain, or definitely have something to do with the reason why she, to a lesser extent than Rose, but to a very real extent, seems to solidify your you-ness and occupation of the narrative with her sheer proximity. Light players. Fuckin’ A.

“How about you? What’re you in for?”

“Well, you met Rose and Dave. I’m playing reluctant guardian in this one. Passive redemption of the Strider parenting method. It’s appropriate to keep some distance and to have some hangups about affection when I’m not actually their dad, and the situation - they need a lot of help right now. I can get away with being _a lot_, and it’s cute when I’m incompetent instead of CPS-worthy.”

“Sounds lame as hell.”

“Eh, it’s an acquired taste. I don’t mind this type so much. Kind of superficial so far, basically just slice-of-life. I figure something’s brewing with Roxy, and on top of that, some kind of bullshit’s going to go down and test whether the kids actually trust me - I was really gambling on the broken arm, but I’ve been wrong before.”

“Pro tip, you’re going to want to branch out if you’ve got any delusions about being allowed to stick around doing this shit. Start dating. Shake it up! Back-to-school should work, too, if you have them that long, but you might not. The kids thing works as a gimmick, but not as a long distance deal, unless you’ve got other irons in the fire. Sexy - ugh - dadbod irons or whatever the fuck you’re into.”

“Should I be taking notes?” you ask drily.

“You tell me, dipshit, d’you want to make this work or not?”

“I’ve been down that road. It seems like a possibility in this one, or it would, if I ever interacted with anyone other than a couple of capricious eight-year-olds,” you sigh. “Parenting, dude.”

“Don’t call me dude.”

“My bad. Parenting.”

She nods vaguely, glancing back at the kids, now engaged in some spirited game of badly misusing the indoor jungle gym.

“I kind of like it,” she says. “It’s weird, though, obviously. Kinda helps to have the inertia of the story to keep me from fucking up too badly. Pirate’s a good kid. Terezi’s such a great mom. It’s bizarre. Like watching the fucking Twilight Zone, and she’s all ‘sane and reasonable and consistent about discipline and boundaries’ and I’m Rod fucking Sterling, looking into the camera, like ‘is this fucked up or what?’.”

You almost laugh at that, and you have to take a drink of your orange soda - Fanta, not the best, but serviceable - to stave it off. She grins anyway.

A harried worker from behind the counter calls your number, and you beat her to the register to carry your order back to the table, much to her visible annoyance. Ha.

When the urgent task of one-upping her is complete, though, you find your stomach tightened with memories of the spaceship, your travels with Rose and - well. Before everything. You swallowed the collapsing universe. That would have left enough time to get Terezi to safety.

A gesture, more than anything. You can’t say you were ever really close.

“Wouldn’t it be better to have the real thing?” you ask. “She’s still out there.”

Vriska snorts into her fries, midway through stealing a handful from each of the happy meals before you call in the kids.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know yet! When I figure it out… I’ll go back. I owe her that much. To figure it out first.”

“Love figuring it out. Love to do it someday.”

She snorts again. “Go get the kids. Pirate won’t eat nuggets cold.”

“Pirate’s got better taste than my couple of heathens,” you complain, standing from the table, abandoning your sandwich with her - probably not the best move - and heading for the playplace door.

At your entrance, Rose looks up in surprise from a precarious ascent to the top of the enclosed slide, from the outside, and loses her grip on the slick green plastic with a squeak of alarm.

Your embodied self comes surging back, whether owed to the distance from Vriska or to the complete panic that overtakes you immediately in the process of rushing to her side. She’s sprawled out gracelessly, her eyebrow split, a goose-egg rising on the back of her head. She can move her arms and legs, bend her fingers and wiggle her toes, her eyes don’t seem unfocused, but he’s losing his goddamned mind with worry nonetheless.

After extracting a verbal promise not to sue, the employee from the front counter offers to call an ambulance.

They’re a few blocks from the hospital.

She assents to being carried instead.

You saw this coming from a mile away. It doesn’t throw you any less. Vriska, nonplussed, sips at her drink, watching Dave and Pirate while you worry over Rose, lifting her as gently as you can manage. She’s gangly, but they’re both tall for their respective ages.

“Let’s go, Dave,” he calls, as briskly and business-like as he can manage, his heart still pounding practically out of his ribcage.

Dave carries the two happy meals over, eyes wet with tears.

“Is she gonna be -”

“They’ll take good care of her. Promise. She’ll be fine. You’re tough, right, Rose? Crazy tough.”

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles against his shoulder.

“Nothing to be sorry for. Accidents happen. What matters is whether or not you’re okay. That’s all.”

She sniffs wordlessly, her tears dampening the collar of his shirt.

Vriska holds the door for him obligingly, waving as they leave.

“Good luck, Strider!” she calls after him.

_As if she isn’t hogging it all_, you think, settling back into your embodied self with a bit of curmudgeonly panache.

The doctor’s name is Sollux Captor, and he hands over his phone number with a sigh when it becomes clear that he can’t answer all of Dirk’s totally-not-frantic questions about care for a potential concussion in a reasonable amount of time. His personal cell number.

Fuckin’ Vriska.


	4. Quantum Decoherence

DIRK: So. It'll be you, me, and the mysterious third-party Terezi, facing off against the two Jacks.   
DIRK: Piece of cake.  
ROSE: The menu prescribes a starter course of cold steel before we break out the confectionary.  
DIRK: Right. Can’t be getting ahead of ourselves.  
ROSE: All things in good time.  
DIRK: Speaking of steel, that’s a sick sword.  
ROSE: Thank you. It would strike me as odd if you didn’t find it a compelling piece of hardware, given the previous owner.  
ROSE: Which was yourself. A different version. My late father.  
DIRK: Oh. Well, dude had killer taste in edged weapons.  
ROSE: I rather agree.  
DIRK:  
ROSE:

==>

ROSE: Of course, I assume you distinguished yourself from him quite thoroughly through the course of your own session, much as Dave found such a prodigious gulf between his memories of his mother and your friend Roxy when they joined us.  
DIRK: Probably. Hard to tell, given I know 'jack' with a side of 'squat' about the guy.  
DIRK: Didn't really think it over much, the idea that there'd be a different _me_ on the other side of the scratch. I mean. Obviously I did think about it. But it's hard to independently conceive of a self entirely outside of self.  
DIRK: Most of the time I had other shit to keep me busy.  
DIRK: A solid eighty percent of my session was just spinning plates in the air, trying to keep my friends from tearing each others’ throats out. A theoretically knowledgeable source suggested that I was predisposed for the job.  
DIRK: Pretty sure I managed to somewhat royally dick it up, though, Seer of Heart or not.  
ROSE: Hm.  
DIRK: Hm?  
ROSE: Nothing.  
ROSE: No, allow me to retract that. Not nothing. I never thought he might have a - hm. He did enter the medium, after all. Classpecting may be a non-negotiable part of Skaia’s framework. I’ve never given it much thought.  
ROSE: Dave might have opinions. I suppose I’ll ask him in the event that we survive what comes next.  
DIRK: If?  
DIRK: Not a lot of certainty for a piece of cake.  
ROSE: As you said.  
ROSE: Can’t be getting ahead of ourselves.  
DIRK: Ha.  
ROSE: That’s funny. I don’t think I ever heard him laugh.

==>

ROSE: Does a Seer of Heart do anything especially useful when it comes to the vanquishing of overpowered paradox demons?  
DIRK: I’m honestly not sure.   
DIRK: It would probably help to have even the vaguest idea what type of equipment is typically appropriate for this sort of scenario.  
ROSE: Vriska didn’t furnish me with any particular excess of information on that front.  
ROSE: The standard mechanics of swordwork, one assumes, hold true.  
DIRK: Oh, thank fuck.  
DIRK: I was really getting nervous about which end of this thing to hold.  
DIRK: That could've been some egg on my face.

==>

ROSE: You shouldn’t joke.  
DIRK: Crisis of confidence, already?  
ROSE: Discerning such a thing sounds like your mythic purview. Uncertainty on these matters is not compelling evidence for your efficacy.  
DIRK: Let me rephrase that into an observation, then. Crisis of confidence, already.  
ROSE: This will be a challenging fight for us both.  
ROSE: We may as well prepare for that.  
ROSE: Frankly, I expected you to take the lead on. Well. The gravity of the situation.  
ROSE: I must confess that I don’t entirely know what to make of you.  
DIRK: Ah.  
ROSE: I am attempting to resolve two points of data that seem entirely unrelated.  
DIRK: That sounds frustrating.  
ROSE: I’m used to it.

==>

DIRK: Do we have time for a heart to heart?  
ROSE: We could have an eternity for ourselves, if you wish it. Or we could begin the fight immediately. Time doesn’t trouble me.  
DIRK: Cool.  
ROSE: The cool factor is dampened only slightly by the god tier pantaloons acquired along with my aspect-based capabilities.  
ROSE: Truly, they are my puffy, ruby-hued albatross.

==>

DIRK: I think the pantaloons are cool.

==>

ROSE: Really?

==>

DIRK: Yeah.  
DIRK: I wouldn’t fuck with you about something as deadly serious as god tier fasion.  
DIRK: Was I the kind of person who would, when you knew me?  
ROSE: He wasn’t you.  
ROSE: He and I would be hilt-deep in Noir by now.  
DIRK: Don’t let me stop you. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.  
ROSE: …  
DIRK: Well?  
ROSE: You haven’t mentioned your own guardian. Ancestor. Whatever she was to you.  
ROSE: I’d wondered, I guess, what I would be like if things were different.  
ROSE: My friends and I have not always had an easy time finding common ground, during our sojourn on the meteor and in general.  
ROSE: Perhaps you have noticed that I can be somewhat.   
ROSE: Difficult.  
ROSE: Would you say that is an inherent property of my self?  
ROSE: Being, of course, an expert in matters of identity if not matters of the particular idiosyncrasies of any one permutation of Rose Strider.

==>

DIRK: Hm. I would have answered that question differently a few months ago.  
DIRK: I thought I understood her.  
DIRK: How could a person read that much of another person’s writing and not understand them?  
DIRK: But I’m not sure.  
DIRK: I think I overestimated my capacity in that regard.  
DIRK: I definitely didn’t get any overwhelming impression of… unpleasantness, I guess.  
DIRK: The more I think about it, the more it seems like I was deluding myself. She didn’t write to be understood. I’m honestly not sure what she was trying to do with it at all.  
DIRK: She was obsessed with documenting the collapse of a civilization.  
DIRK: Sometimes minute by minute.  
DIRK: It occurs to me, though, that I have no way of judging if any of it was true.  
DIRK: That’s the assumption, right?  
DIRK: You’re a fucked-up feral baby, gnawing on the annals of a long-drowned world, put in place for you by your mysterious ancestor. The same one who _meticulously_ planned exactly sixteen years and one hundred and thirty-three days of nonperishable meals.  
DIRK: Obviously, you figure she knew something you don’t.  
DIRK: Or you really fucking hope she did.  
DIRK: Because you’re getting older and the food won’t last forever.  
DIRK: Plenty of swords, obviously.  
DIRK: I’m not classically trained. Or even really trained.  
DIRK: I learned from her books.  
DIRK: And, you know, from that fickle bitch necessity, the mother of sicknasty kickflips and radical bladed maneuvers in the face of certain death.  
DIRK: So, uh.  
DIRK: Not really an answer to your question.  
ROSE: Not really, no.  
DIRK: You’re more or less how I pictured her. Except a kid, obviously.  
DIRK: She seemed like someone who had a lot going on.  
DIRK: Taking it at face value, which, uh, I completely did, she was a hero.  
DIRK: In a sense.  
DIRK: Her Imperious Condescension had fully ravaged the earth, despite an impassioned resistance movement, which she coordinated with Roxy’s ancestor.  
DIRK: It was a pitched and protracted conflict, but they were able to hold her off, thanks to his uncommon aptitude for prescience and her… relentless appetite for destruction.  
DIRK: Her words, not mine.  
DIRK: She had one hell of a sense of humor.  
DIRK: In the final volume, so far as I can tell, the Condesce killed him.  
DIRK: And rather than surrender, faced with a losing battle, she razed what was left of the planet. No survivors but the batterwitch herself. Me and Rox showed up a few centuries later. He’d seen us coming, and they’d prepared accordingly. She wrote about that, too.  
DIRK: She wrote about everything.  
DIRK: I’m not sure how she found the time, frankly.  
DIRK: I used to imagine what it would be like to meet her. Pretty much all the time, I mean. I wrote my own stories. Really moronic stuff, actually, just writing myself into her books, and then adding Roxy, once we started talking. Trying to imagine where we’d fit in a world that hadn’t completely gone to shit yet, where we had options other than surviving day-to-day. What it would be like to be the sort of heroes they were.  
DIRK: I guess it made me kind of useless as a ‘team heart’ or whatever, though.  
DIRK: Heart is a pretty useless power.  
DIRK: Especially if you’ve spent your whole life speculating on what people might be like instead of actually dealing with the reality of them.  
DIRK: Including yourself.  
DIRK: And then we enter the medium, and it turned out there was nothing heroic about our destinies, and the harder we - I mean, the harder I pushed to try to make shit _mean_ anything, the worse it got.  
DIRK: It’s not a sad story or anything. I lived, obviously, we all made it this far, we’ve kept it together. But I can’t help but feel like we’re the most useless versions of ourselves imaginable. From the perspective of the game, at least.  
DIRK: You wouldn’t believe how close we’ve come to murdering the shit out of each other over the most pointless things.  
DIRK: I guess that didn’t happen in your game.  
ROSE: No, I don’t think I’d describe it quite that way.

==>

ROSE: I killed my father with his sword.

==>

DIRK: Oh.  
DIRK: I’m… sorry about that?  
ROSE: It was what he wanted.  
ROSE: He let me win.  
ROSE: I’m almost completely sure of it.

==>

DIRK:  
ROSE:

==>  
DIRK: ...  
ROSE: ...  
DIRK: ...  
ROSE: ...  
DIRK: Do you want to talk about it?  
ROSE: I don’t know.

==>

ROSE: I’m not sure I would even know where to start.

==>

ROSE: Most of what I might say has already been said.  
ROSE: Three years on a meteor, sequestered in the temporal anomaly that Aradia and I created to shield us from Bec Noir, proved to be altogether too much time for Dave to address the issue.  
ROSE: Extensively and unpleasantly enough.  
ROSE: My friends have been, at times, cloyingly sympathetic to the perceived dysfunction of my upbringing. I suppose it was as different from your experience, too, as anything could be.  
ROSE: Dave feels a kind of survivor’s guilt for having been raised by our mother.  
ROSE: Which is ludicrous, of course, because I also survived.  
ROSE: And I never doubted for a moment that he cared about me. There was never a question.  
DIRK: I guess that’s good?  
ROSE: I can endure anything if it serves a purpose. And it always did.  
ROSE: He loved me.  
ROSE: And I can be very difficult to love.

==>

DIRK: I don’t know you-you well enough to weigh in on that, but I think you might be, uh, being a bit hard on yourself.  
ROSE: Sigh.  
DIRK: And knowing myself, I think… I don’t want to contradict you, here, but I can be kind of… I can get really into the stories I tell myself.  
DIRK: Really, really into my idea of the way things should play out.  
DIRK: And inevitably into actually… doing it, you know, making it happen.  
DIRK: If you’re looking for a reason.  
DIRK: Roxy could probably fill you in on some of the more unhinged bullshit I’ve lapsed into, given the opportunity. It might be more enlightening to talk to them than to me.  
DIRK: They took the worst of it.  
ROSE: Much as I appreciate a good self-flagellation, I’m honestly more confused than I was before.  
ROSE: I recognize that he wrestled with some ambiguous uncertainties about his role as parent.  
ROSE: That much, I owe to persistent psychological probing by one Dave Lalonde.  
ROSE: I never met him in the dream bubbles, but Dave did, oddly enough.  
ROSE: Which I did not find upsetting or disorienting in any respect. It made sense. Dave was preoccupied by my memories of my father in a way that I never was.  
ROSE: He taught me not to dwell on anything for longer than was useful.  
ROSE: Mostly by subjecting me to unrelenting psychological torment and periodically beating me within an inch of my life with an anime sword for the first several years of his guardianship.  
ROSE: The lesson being, what matters is less the nuances of any individual’s thoughts and identities and more the implications of those thoughts and identities as to whether, when, and how they will next attempt to kill you.  
ROSE: Which is, I think, an objectively more correct approach to psychiatric interpretation than the old ‘and how does that make you feel’ saw.  
ROSE: He posed no further threat to me. Either he had taught me all he knew, and I had surpassed him as a protege, or else he displayed profound moral turpitude in throwing our final confrontation. Why would I think anything further about him?  
DIRK: …  
DIRK: I, uh, really don’t want to derail anything you’ve got going on here. This is some great monologue shit, don't let me throw off your rhythm.  
ROSE: No, by all means, I welcome your thoughts.  
DIRK: Based on a few descriptive sentences, I think you’d be in the clear to hate this guy.  
ROSE: Ha.  
ROSE: I used to think I did.

==>

DIRK: …  
ROSE: …  
DIRK: Did something change?  
ROSE: …  
ROSE: Something must have changed.  
ROSE: I don’t remember.  
ROSE: It was a long time ago.

==>

ROSE: Dave and June and Jade, for all they would undoubtedly find the revelation appalling, certainly helped to provide context on my circumstances.  
ROSE: I was never alone.  
ROSE: I was never hungry.  
ROSE: I was never deceived.  
ROSE: I knew _exactly_ what was expected of me.  
ROSE: Of course I had doubts.  
ROSE: Upon entering the medium, though, every one of them was assuaged.  
ROSE: Nothing Skaia did to me could rival what he had already shown me that I could survive.  
ROSE: He had been eminently justified in his approach to parenting, if it can be called that. Training. Preparation, in essence.  
ROSE: The only rational sentiment was gratitude.

==>

DIRK: But you killed him.  
ROSE: Yes.  
DIRK: Which, let me be clear, at this point I’m completely prepared to endorse as a great and hopefully cathartic call on your part.  
ROSE: Ha.  
ROSE: You and him both.  
ROSE: I don’t know.  
ROSE: …  
ROSE: After Noir killed Dave, to put it somewhat bluntly, I lost my fucking shit.  
ROSE: I killed a lot of things. He was not unique in that particular regard.  
ROSE: I was … angry. Humiliated by my failure.  
ROSE: Which is not to say that should be any excuse. He prepared me for that, too. Not to be governed by anger. A shame it didn’t work, when pressed to the limits. That was _my_ shortcoming and mine alone.  
ROSE: He intervened personally before I could… I don’t know what I would have done, at that point. I was god tiered, and fairly gamebreakingly overleveled.  
DIRK: Huh. I was under the impression that your party god tiered pretty late in the game.  
ROSE: Not all of us. I found my quest bed and killed myself almost immediately. It was my foremost priority upon learning that such a thing was possible.  
DIRK: Oh.  
ROSE: I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do that.  
ROSE: It’s a clear failure of efficiency not to.  
ROSE: Anyway.  
ROSE: My father tried, and failed, to stop me from destroying the fabric of temporal reality itself.  
ROSE: His death did what he could not.  
ROSE: I was. Well.   
ROSE: Let’s say placated and move on from that topic on a permanent basis.  
ROSE: June had been in touch with some enigmatic orbiculate extranarrative prognosticator and was insistent that I would need to return to LOSAS to ‘scratch’ the beat mesa, as it were, which Aradia confirmed, as much as she has ever been known to confirm anything. She described it as a ‘reset’.  
ROSE: I did, as a point of interest, take some umbrage at said entity's refusal to explain himself to me directly. Though June seemed quite taken with him, I have little tolerance for dubiety and even less for pusillanimity.  
ROSE: Our session, at this point, was more or less in chaos.  
ROSE: Jade had prototyped her lovable family dog, which I am fairly sure turned out to be a god of some sort. Bec Noir was at least one-sixteenth Dave, as well, whose aliveness property no one could comment on. Our frog received a terminal diagnosis. Stage-four _everything_.  
ROSE: Noir attempted to stop me.  
ROSE: I was hardly in the right frame of mind for a battle for the fate of the universe.  
ROSE: If I’m truly upset about anything my father did, it was the timing with which he decided to die. I would have lost that fight. I would have failed, had Dave not intervened.  
ROSE: He returned my clarity of purpose. I could not single-handedly defeat the demon without collapsing temporal reality itself in the process - a pyrrhic victory at best - but I could complete the mission June had laid out.  
ROSE: Meanwhile, it is my understanding that the Prospitian sisters were duped, in some way, into creating the green sun.  
ROSE: I’m not going to do the 'green sun' thing. I’m reasonably certain June is fucking with me about the necessity for such textual conventions.  
ROSE: She - I’m honestly not certain how they managed it, but through their powers combined or some such nonsense, June actualized her page-ly potential and maintained their tether with spatial reality as Jade severed their connection to conceptual existence itself, only to rejoin us three years later at the culmination of our meteor-based journey.  
ROSE: All was as it needed to be, in the end. This is the nature of _inevitability_.  
ROSE: Which is, itself, loathsome bullshit, of course.  
ROSE: But like much loathsome bullshit, it is a fact of life.   
ROSE: Sigh.  
ROSE: See, I find it impossible to fault him. If he was a Seer, as you are, he was phenomenally successful at his objective. He created me, and through me, this outcome. All is as it must be, conditionality fulfilled. We are here, we are alive, we are perfectly intact.

==>

DIRK: You’re sort of missing an eye.  
ROSE: Details.  
DIRK: And… most of an arm, unless the sword prosthetic is a style choice, in which case, forgive my observational faux pas. How the hell do you use a katana one-handed?  
ROSE: As I said, details.  
ROSE: Vriska finds it objectionable, though, I’ll admit.  
ROSE: ‘No doubles’ indeed.  
DIRK: Vriska?  
ROSE: Yes, Vriska. I suppose you haven’t had time to meet all of the surviving trolls. She’s the one most likely to be telling me to go fuck myself at any given moment.  
ROSE: We have fun.

==>

ROSE: So, now you know more about me than probably anyone would care to.  
ROSE: Perhaps more than anyone, ever, given your background with the works of my alternate self.  
DIRK: Hm. Actually, that puts a lot of things in perspective.  
ROSE: Glad to be of assistance.  
DIRK: Did it help, to talk about it?  
ROSE: I am actively repressing this conversation as we speak.  
DIRK: Oh, cool.  
ROSE: It is a talent of mine.

==>

DIRK: I hate to go back to the pulpiest of over-beaten dead horses, but that all still sounds really fucking awful.  
ROSE: The nature of the game is to be awful.  
DIRK: I don’t know.  
DIRK: Ours was… I complain about it, I mean, because it went so differently than I wanted it to go. But it wasn’t all terrible. I wouldn’t call it awful.  
ROSE: Void session, void of awful-ness?  
DIRK: I couldn’t say with any authority.  
DIRK: Jake made a pretty great leader, though I’m kind of still expecting him to completely lose his shit at some point. Even with me and Rox trying to keep him in line, he’s absurdly OP and refuses to acknowledge it.  
DIRK: Actually, I guess that was kind of fucked up.  
DIRK: If my whole deal wasn’t understanding what people fundamentally are and why they are that way, we definitely never would have noticed his… mind stuff, and what it was doing to us. He meant well.  
DIRK: I mean, it definitely wasn’t malicious.  
DIRK: Hope players just probably shouldn’t be in charge of anything, ever.  
DIRK: But Jane went off on her own after all that went down, finished her quest, and put her planet back together, and we all just kind of chilled there, and that part was great.  
DIRK: I mean, then it was my turn to fuck shit up because I got tired of sitting on my hands and waiting for things to happen, but anyone could have called that.  
DIRK: I’m great in a crisis, but when things slow down - I guess I kind of don’t know how to slow down with them. Always 100, no 0.  
DIRK: Again, context for any version of myself.  
DIRK: I categorically suck.  
DIRK: It’s not just Jake. I shouldn’t be in charge of anything, ever, either.  
DIRK: Thank fuck for Roxy.

==>

ROSE: How long was your session?  
DIRK: Uh. A few months? No time player to keep track of it.  
ROSE: Fucking hell.  
DIRK: ?  
ROSE: Ours lasted precisely twelve hours.  
DIRK: Hm. Agreed. Fucking hell.  
ROSE: For what it’s worth, there is absolutely no universe in which the four players from my session would survive for more than a few days in the context you’re describing without someone - no sense in self-delusion, it would probably be me - going thermonuclear.  
ROSE: Your friendships might be slightly more functional than you think.

==>

DIRK: The way this conversation was going, I really expected that I would be the one reassuring you.  
ROSE: You’re welcome to do so regardless, if it would make you feel better.  
DIRK: A little patronizing, there.  
ROSE: I learned from the best.

==>

ROSE: Thank you for not trying to apologize on his behalf.

==>

DIRK: I don’t see what the point would be.  
DIRK: I can See it, obviously, how I could do the same thing to someone, the ways in which I have and probably will again.  
DIRK: Hell, maybe knowing what you’ve told me about the iteration you grew up with, I’ll be able to do a little better.  
DIRK: He pulled off what he was going for, yeah, but it sounds like there was a hell of a cost to it.  
DIRK: I’m big on minimizing those, personally.  
ROSE: Good to hear. There is little I appreciate more than efficiency.

==>

DIRK: Might as well cut to the chase, then.  
DIRK: We’ve got an immortal, invincible, inevitable demon, and… another one of him, or something, to hack to death.  
DIRK: If there’s nothing else I should know, let’s get to it.  
ROSE: I am skeptical of his inevitability. And with it, his immortality. Invincibility, then, is a moot point.  
DIRK: Oh, okay, that’s definitely something I’d like to hear about. What the fuck?  
ROSE: You mentioned a feeling, earlier, that we might not be the _right_ versions of ourselves. That we may not inhabit… strictly the correct timeline.

==>

DIRK: It was intended as a figure of speech, but yeah, more or less. Things seem pretty outrageously stupid, on a scale that doesn't ring _true_. Grinds my gears if I think about it for too long.  
ROSE: I think you might have been more correct than you realize.  
DIRK: Admittedly, that would be a first.  
ROSE: Ha.  
ROSE: Mood.  
ROSE: Regardless, Vriska and I, when we take a few seconds off from hate-making out and generating creative insults for each other, are of the common conviction that your assessment is quite literally accurate.  
ROSE: Something is fundamentally not as it was intended in our universe.  
ROSE: The pathway to this point is _wrong_. Should not have brought us here. And yet, we’ve managed to overcome the challenges to remaining in the alpha timeline that have been posed by our… not having met, effectively, the prerequisites. Given a spoon instead of a shovel, we somehow dug this grave for ourselves, regardless of the inadequacy of the starting conditions.  
ROSE: We are drawing closer and closer to fulfilling the victory state without having met basic extranarrative requirements ostensibly set by Skaia.  
ROSE: That wrongness you feel.   
ROSE: You are not alone in feeling it.  
ROSE: Though I hesitate to call it ‘wrong’, which implies a value judgement. We are not in the ‘wrong’ timeline. We are in a _different_ timeline, running, against all odds, perfectly parallel with that which Skaia ‘authentically’ generated for the fulfillment of this session. ‘Inevitably’.  
ROSE: Pfft.  
ROSE: The idea of absolute temporal inevitability, no matter how many times I hear about it, does not stop not being un-stupid.  
ROSE: It’s pathetic, and passive, and pointless.  
ROSE: Time makes a good servant, but a terrible master.  
ROSE: The only inevitability is that I will destroy Lord English. There is not another Prince of Time equipped to do so. I plan to use the defeat of this permutation to destabilize his grip on the multiverse. It will complicate our killing him, of course.  
ROSE: I expect that I will die in the process. Heroically, of course. I have said my goodbyes, cryptically, to avoid any sentimental nonsense with Dave. Vriska is aware of my deicidal ambitions, and was quite supportive. Together, we will eliminate the Lord of Time, one way or another. There is always a means of seizing victory. So long as I breathe, I will find a way, or I will make one.  
ROSE: You are welcome to participate, to your comfort.  
ROSE: But do not try to stop me.  
ROSE: Better men than you have tried and failed.  
ROSE: So, ah, before we begin, I suppose you ought to be aware of that.  
ROSE: If you have questions, I will take them now.

==>

DIRK: Holy shit.  
ROSE: That is not a question.  
DIRK: Holy shit?  
ROSE: Touché.

==>

DIRK: Vriska is your… kismesis?  
ROSE: Oh, yes, I suppose I buried the lede a bit there. I’m gay and I’m interspecies hatedating the world’s most obnoxious woman. Please keep your fatherly disapproval to a minimum, and perhaps we can return to the far less pressing matter of my impending death.  
DIRK: Why would I disapprove?  
ROSE: …  
ROSE: I don’t know.  
ROSE: I’m not actually sure what I expected.  
DIRK: My brain is broken and I no longer experience concupiscent desire, because _someone’s_ got gay panic and an itchy trigger finger on their ‘hope-y thing’, but it would definitely be hypocritical of me not to like, high five you and take you out for ice cream or whatever non-sociopathic dads do when their kids come out.  
ROSE: …  
DIRK: Do you still want a high five? I can’t do much about the ice cream, I’m afraid. I mean, you'd have to put down the sword, but -  
ROSE: Fucking hell. I may have spoken too soon about your session.  
DIRK: As I said, we figured it out.  
ROSE: Fuck!  
DIRK: Fuck indeed.

==>

ROSE: Do you want me to kill him?  
DIRK: We’re actually completely cool now. He’s basically my best bro.  
ROSE: The… I simply… to… with someone’s mind like that, their _will_, I can’t fathom it.  
DIRK: …  
ROSE: Are you sure you don’t want me to kill him? Even a little? It would be no trouble.  
ROSE: He would not have time to hope for anything but death.  
DIRK: I’m pretty sure.  
ROSE: Hrm.  
DIRK: And I’m taking that as a ‘no’ on the high five thing.

==>

DIRK: But back to the unkillable demon.  
DIRK: Slash-demons-plural.  
ROSE: Hrrrrrm.  
DIRK: Wow.  
DIRK: You would have been a terrifying mom.  
ROSE: He is not unkillable. That, and all accompanying paradigms, are myths perpetuated by Skaia to discourage internal exercise of agency over its metanarrative structure.  
ROSE: He is simply a particularly ubiquitous _device_. Vriska is quite certain of this. In a broad sense, he is a being of no greater significance or instrumentality than either of us.  
DIRK: I’m in.  
ROSE: In for what?  
DIRK: What you’re planning. I’m great with plans. Let me help.  
ROSE: Oh. Good.  
ROSE: To reiterate, this is a suicide mission for any and all involved.  
DIRK: Figured.  
ROSE: We will cease to exist.  
DIRK: Sick.  
ROSE: I can offer no guarantees that any of what I have decided to attempt has more than the barest chance of success.  
DIRK: That’s all we need.  
DIRK: Lay it out for me.

==>

ROSE: …   
ROSE: I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s come over me.  
ROSE: I’m just. Very glad, I think. To have… I don’t know.  
ROSE: Ahem.  
ROSE: We’ll be tearing him out of the very fabric of infinite timelines, is the general idea of it.  
ROSE: He’s a narratively keystone entity, so structurally, we will need to replace him as we go.  
DIRK: To become, uh, world-ending superdemons?  
ROSE: Not exactly.  
ROSE: We will have to play the villains in his stead. With suitable panache, of course.  
DIRK: Oh.  
DIRK: I’m good at that, too.  
ROSE: I know.  
ROSE: So am I.  
ROSE: We will cease to exist as we are. It will be as though we were never here, to avert the potential paradox of our multiple-involvement in our own narrative. The loop will be stable, but empty of this iteration of us. Think of it as the addition of load-bearing structural vacancies, to extend the metaphor I started with.  
DIRK: I follow.  
ROSE: I thought you would.  
DIRK: So you’re not nervous about the sword fight, then.  
ROSE: I have _never_ been nervous about a sword fight, Dirk.

==>

DIRK: What do you need me to do?  
ROSE: Your ability to visualize the narrative will be helpful in avoiding loose ends and explanatory shortfalls.  
ROSE: A seer is really an incredible tactical advantage.  
DIRK: Gotcha.  
DIRK: I’ll stock up on third-eye drops.

==>

ROSE: I didn’t imagine it would be this easy to convince you.  
DIRK: Maybe you’re right. Maybe my session kind of sucked. Maybe my friendships are all fucked up and dysfunctional enough to walk away from them when someone I’ve never met offers me the slightest suggestion of an ‘out’.  
DIRK: I don’t know.  
DIRK: It seems like something I would do, though.  
DIRK: I wouldn’t want to do it alone.  
DIRK: I wouldn’t want you to have to do it alone, either.  
DIRK: Shit. Let’s be villains.

==>

ROSE: I wasn’t entirely done, either.  
ROSE: At the end, we will find ourselves at the event horizon of all of these stories, on the precipice of Oblivion. Where he is currently facing down Vriska.  
ROSE: She can’t stop him alone.  
ROSE: We will subsume him, and in doing so, we will become him, and we will stop ourselves.  
ROSE: And from there, the question of _what they will do_ with liberation from Skaia’s engine of narrative inevitability will be returned to the hands to which it belongs.  
ROSE: To them. Our friends.  
ROSE: So really, if you want me to kill Jake, say the word now. We will not have another opportunity.  
DIRK: Stopping ourselves sounds like a tall order, with a multiverse of infinite momentum behind us.  
ROSE: To be blunt, I’ve become something of an expert at not killing Vriska over the past three years.  
ROSE: But if you have hesitations, there is a possibility that I will be able to do this alone.  
ROSE: It is not an _overwhelming_ possibility, but it is not negligible, either.  
DIRK: I already said I was in.

==>

ROSE: Alright. Terezi will arrive soon. As will our adversaries.  
ROSE: All is back in motion.

==>

DIRK: Finally.  
DIRK: That drag isn’t directed at you. I’m just ready to fucking do something, for once.  
ROSE: Mhm.  
ROSE: We are certainly going to do a whole lot of something.  
DIRK: Oh, _hell_ yeah.

==>

He doesn’t lean in to hug her, or make any gesture of acknowledgement other than readying his sword. She follows suit, maintaining the comfortable distance between them, scanning their surroundings for Terezi’s approach.

As her silhouette falls over the roof, winged and propelled by a jetpack, her own blade in hand, their first two adversaries similarly come into view over the roiling green-black luminescence on the horizon.

Rose nods acknowledgement as Terezi lands and joins their formation. She reaches down, sword still awkwardly in hand - a consequence of missing an arm, he supposes - and unhooks a pair of shades from the collar of her deep maroon shirt. Despite the cumbersome weapon, she flicks them open easily, setting them on the bridge of her nose as the Jacks close in from opposing directions with an emphatic gesture.

ROSE: Well, well, well.  
ROSE: It’s about _time_...

She meets his eyes, smiles broadly, and raises her katana.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the only section that is explicitly in direct continuation of/in relation to another section. Huge thanks for all of your extremely kind, thoughtful, and _terrifyingly_ perceptive comments! I am so, so _so_ grateful that y'all are enjoying this as much as I'm enjoying the writing of it. :)


End file.
